SpiderMan hearts Jenny W
by Snorpenbass
Summary: AU set in the BND-verse. Ignores current comics, including the Kraven family thing. Opens after Heroic Age has begun. A depressed Jennifer Walters is getting drunk, and an equally morose Peter Parker tries to cheer her up. SMxSH.
1. Chapter 1

Jen Walters stared at the two-gallon plastic jug of beer and wished she could get drunk. They'd tried. God knew they'd tried. The jug was one of those novelty advertising things meant to hang from the ceiling, in the shape of a stein the size of a small keg. The owner had graciously taken it down for her, cleaned it out and poured it full of enough beer to incapacitate an entire college fraternity for a week, but to her gamma-powered physique it gave her barely more than a buzz.

Oh, she _could_ turn back into regular Jennifer.

Except her mousy alter ego was such a lightweight that even sniffing a cork made her vaguely dizzy, and what she _really_ wanted right now was to get rip-roaringly drunk out of her green skull, pick up some handsome boy-toy and get home, ravish him, then wake up with a hangover that fit her mood.

They fired her.

_Her_!

Okay, so Titania had marched in through a wall during a court case. Sure, she was best friends with a known Skrull terrorist. Yes, she'd accidentally broken four company cars by hulking out in them (all for a good cause, honest!), and yeah, she had to admit that the whole John Jameson/Pug/skanky alternate universe double/SHRA and all the aftermath had been...bad for her career. And sure, she'd gone through five lawyer jobs at this point, been rejected for the district attorney's office, and been threatened by disbarment twice, but...

Great. She was depressed.

She'd signed the last annulment papers just a month ago. Due to being briefly on the run, the Osborn regime and not having an actual home for the better part of a year, the whole thing had been on hold, and when she finally got an address of her own, they had dropped down her mail slot like a little reminder of things she had tried hard to forget.

She never _loved_ John. It was hard to realize the truth, that she had been manipulated by that arrogant, self-absorbed Titanian moron into a relationship with a man she considered a friend, and that the whole thing had left a good man devastated, herself feeling like a heel and a distinct lack of a dead Starfox.

Okay, she wouldn't _kill_ him.

Just bash him over the head with a small ocean-liner or two.

_Or three._

…

She sighed. She really, _really_ wanted to get drunk. But the only bar in New York that served the kind of things that could get someone like her good and drunk had barred her for life because of that damn alternate universe skank who'd waltzed around and slept with anything that moved for months before discovered and extradited. So she had to come _here_, a fairly normal faux-Irish bar in the Village, a fairly average place where all the patrons were giving her nervous glances as she gulped down enough beer to kill a small rhino.

_Rhino_.

Thank _God_ her double hadn't slept with _that_ one as well. She'd never live it down.

The last dregs of beer ran down her throat and she frowned. Nope, still nothing. And she couldn't order another one. Her tolerance for alcohol might be infinite but her bladder sure as hell wasn't. In fact, she had to go. Like, right _now_.

She stood up, glancing at the bartender. "Ladies' room?"

He mutely pointed at a hallway down the main room, and she nodded her thanks. Being imposing definitely had its uses. No smarmy types trying to hit on her all the time. She smirked, and went to 'powder her nose'

…

Getting back to her seat she pondered the men in her life. Starting with her father. Sheriff Morris Walters, old-school badass, rugged cop, complete asshole. In the Kingdom of Morris, women were to be quiet, unassuming and humble, lest they incur the backhanded slap, the 20 lashes with a belt or the sneering comments.

He left his marks. The way mousy Jennifer sought out domineering, patriarchal types. Various boyfriends of the type Morris approved, but everyone else said she could do better than. Then...gamma rebirth.

Then came the way towering Jen sought out men who were the exact _opposite_. Strong, independent men who didn't mind a strong, independent woman, but also had a fear of commitment. And the few who _did_ want to commit...

_Wyatt._

_John._

She blinked, eyes filling with tears.

Why was it that every time she found a man who was everything she wanted, she pushed them away? Or worse...never loved them to begin with.

_Oh, John. I never meant to hurt you._

_Goddamn Starfox._

"Hey! You are the She-Hulk, _nyet_?"

Slowly, Jen looked up, and up, and up...

It was a woman. Sort of. _Vaguely_ female, at least. About six foot nine, straight dark brown hair in a bob, pimply, nut-brown fake-tan skin (of which she showed off way too much), and muscles that screamed out a history of artificial enhancement, and not the super-kind, either. Almost no chest to speak of, wearing cut-off red denim shorts that were decidedly unflattering, a skimpy red tank-top that revealed way too much acne, bad body odor and decidedly increased hair growth in embarrassing places. God, she did _not_ want to see that _ever_ again.

"And you are?"

"I am the woman who will be your doom!"

The accent was _hilarious_. Russian? Former Soviet republic, at the least.

"Don't tell me. You're looking for Moose and Squirrel."

In response, the steroid broiler yelled with incoherent rage and punched at the table, sending novelty beer stein, bowl of peanuts and ash tray flying as the solid plywood furniture split in half, easily.

Okay. So not just regular steroids, then. MGH?

She stood up, slowly, letting the freak realize her true height. Six foot nine was impressive, sure. Seven and a half, not including the hair, was much more so. "You _really_ don't want to do this. _Tiny_."

The wall of the bar exploded outwards and a green shape smashed into a store across the street. The burglar alarm went off. as the window was smashed through along with the steel curtain behind it.

There was a brief lull, then the cause of said explosion strode out through the new doorway, into the street.

"Bow down before Crimson Tide!"

Buried under two feet of rubble and aching from where the glass was slowly being pushed out of her wounds by her healing factor, Jen had to giggle. "Oh, man. Worst choice of name _ever_."

A massive fist shot down into the rubble and managed to grab a handful of dark emerald hair. Being dragged up by the follicles was painful even for someone who could dropkick an elephant across the Grand Canyon.

"You _laugh_? Fool! I will be your _DEATH_!"

The giggles just refused to subside. "Hey, I always said PMS would kill me one of these days, little did I know..."

The Russian steroid freak frowned at her, confused. "What are you talking about?"

"Hey, I wonder if your natural weakness is maxi-pads." More giggles. Okay, the beer might be starting to kick in. A little.

"You are _mocking_ me? Are you _mad_?"

Jen couldn't help herself. She laughed.

A punch broke her nose. Another jogged a tooth loose. Okay, the steroid lady was _really_ strong. Time to end this. "Hey, Auntie Flo. A moron says what?"

The Russian frowned. "What?"

The first punch sent Steroid Lady right through the ceiling, into the storage area above and through the roof. When she landed, another punch sent her head-first into a garbage dumpster hard enough to pierce the sturdy steel plating. The Russian pulled herself loose, dizzy and covered in refuse.

"Had enough yet?"

'Crimson Tide' (and Jen had to suppress another giggle fit at the thought of that name) staggered to her feet a bit wobbly-legged Still hunched over the steroid broiler made another attempt, but was too groggy to do more than whiff aimlessly in Jen's general direction. She sighed. Fine, then.

"Well, I guess it's time to stopper the flow. Here, have a Tampax." She closed her fist and carefully bonked the Russian on the top of her head, not hard enough to seriously damage her but definitely strongly enough to knock her out for a few hours.

Once she was sure the woman was out cold she rifled through the pockets and pulled out a very empty wallet (which meant nothing in this era of Internet money transfers and PayPal accounts). Then she walked back to the bar, a bit unsteady on her feet herself.

"You got insurance?"

The bar owner gave her a sour glare. "Yeah, Damage Inc. Had to after Daredevil beat up half my clientèle last year."

"Good. Call the cops and tell them we have a," she glanced at the cards in the wallet, "Svetlana Luzchenko here, no passport, no American ID or driver's license so possible illegal, super-powered, probably MGH so they should bring a damper wagon."

The glare deepened. "Why should I do that?"

She smiled. "Because if you don't she'll be gunning for this bar and me the moment she wakes up. Your call. Me, I want to see if you have anything stronger than that beer I drank earlier."

…

* * *

…

The warm evening air blew gently as a lone red-and-blue shape danced gracefully among the skyscrapers high above the ground. Every now and then a mechanical zipping sound was heard and a fine strand of white web-like material shot through the air, at which point the shape would let go of the strand he was swinging on, grab hold of the new and start another deceptively slow-seeming graceful arc that sent him higher and faster than any car below.

_Life sucks. Then you fry._ Peter Parker sighed. It was a beautiful summer evening, he was selling ad-space on his Spidey site like nobody's business (he'd managed to find the rolls containing the old Rocket Racer and Big Wheel fights, which, while embarrassing, paid this month's rent) and Carly had told him in no unclear terms she just wanted to be friends.

Yep, the old Parker luck was sure having fun at his expense. If he was beaten up as Spider-Man, something good happened for Peter Parker. If Peter Parker got dumped or evicted, Spider-Man won the day. Or, everything went to pot for both sides of his life. You never knew.

He felt a need he hadn't felt since the day Gwen died. Since the day MJ left him at the altar.

_I need a drink._

He wasn't a big drinker. Never had been. Light beer, tops, but more often just a soda or water. Part of this came from growing up with Uncle Ben and Aunt May, while Ben had an occasional beer May had never been much for alcohol, and so neither was Peter, mainly to keep from disappointing her.

But every now and then he drank. A beer, maybe two, tops, while watching the game on TV at Thanksgiving. Or, like when MJ dumped him, a lot of it.

He hadn't really been old enough when Gwen died.

Probably for the best, too. He had the feeling that if he drank as often as he would like he'd be an alcoholic by now. Chuckling, he pictured the AA meeting. _'Hi, my name is Spider-Man and I'm an alcoholic. I've been sober for three months now.' 'Hi, Spidey!' 'My sponsor is Tony Stark, and...'_

Whoa. The street below was covered in rubble, three cop cars, an ambulance and a huge damper wagon, one of those special vehicles utilized by the Raft. Something was going on here.

He landed on top of the damper wagon, squatting right above the rear doors, and watched as they were bringing the ugliest man he'd ever seen...no, wait, that was a _woman_?

"Yikes. I think I just found the Rhino's long lost twin sister."

One of the cops gave a start, pulling a gun and aiming right at him. "Hold it right there, freak! You're still-"

"-a member of the Avengers, personal friend of both the old and the new Captain America and on a first-name basis with Thor. Osborn's in jail, buddy. Charges have been dropped. Also, check out spideybites dot com, for all your Spider-Man blooper needs."

Okay, he could have held back on the snark a little. And the gratuitous product placement was a bit much. But it felt kind of good to be able to say it. That, and every new subscriber was a dime in Peter Parker's bank account.

The cop frowned, but holstered the gun. "So what do _you_ want?"

"Well, I _was_ just checking if you needed an assist, but you seem to be doing just hunky-dory to me. I'll be off again, okay?" He was about to web-swing out when one of the other cops, a red-headed female, waved him down.

"Wait, Spidey. Don't mind Rivera over there, he's just cranky because he has to write a report on this." As he landed next to her she continued. "So we have a possible intoxicated superhuman here, not counting the angry illegal immigrant in the restrainer cuffs, and I sure as hell don't want a big fight on my hands. Especially since she's one of the _good_ girls."

He scratched his neck, puzzled. "_Who_?"

…

"Heeee-_eeeeyyy_, Spidey. Spidey-spaniel-sputter-putter-man. Co-could you tell these wunnerful ossifers of the la-haw that I am not frung. Drufung. Drfunk. Drung. Something"

_Oh, God. Why me?_

"Hey, Jen. Uh...guys? I'll take it from here."

The cops surrounding the jade giantess glanced at each other, then finally shrugged, heading outside. He glanced around at the bar, which was very much near-empty apart from a sour-looking bartender.

A belch loud as a 1960's car engine starting interrupted his first thoughts ('_What a dump!_') and refocused his attention on the matter at hand. Oh yeah, she was drunk. As a skunk.

"C'mon! Ha-have a sheet. Seat. I'm bored, and drung, and low-honely. Bey! Bar guy! Give'im a beer or somethin'."

"Uh...I'm not so sure that's a good idea..."

A big green hand that was surprisingly dainty even being bigger than his own clamped down on his neck and forced him onto the wall-mounted bench right next to her. "Nonsense! Jus' the one, 'sall. One f'r the road."

He sighed. Well, he _had_ been thinking of stopping at McGinty's near his apartment building, so... "Okay. Just the one."

…

"An' then he killed my girlfrien'."

"No!"

"Yeah. It was..." He stared morosely at his beer. "...bad."

She stared at him, a supportive hand on his shoulder. "Wow. I thought _I_ had it bad."

He looked at her in surprise. "Me? No, no, I'm just peachy. 'M fine. _You_ on th' other han'...I mean, at least I c'n hide who I _am_. I c'n keep most my loved ones safe from that kinda stuff happ'nin' 'gain. You...you're kinda hard t' miss."

"You sayin' I'm _fat_?"

"Nah, nah, no way. Y'r beautiful. _Gorgeous_. 'S the problem, see? You're, what, seven an' a half foot tall, bright green, and looks like a swimsuit model. Nobody gonna miss that."

She grinned. "Y'think I'm _beautiful_? Awww, _thanks_. Y'never said _that_ before!"

He shrugged in response. His mask had been rolled up enough for him to drink, and even though they'd added pretzels to keep from drinking on an empty stomach, he was definitely gonna have to call it a day now. "Well, y'r kinda imposing. Y'know how guys react when someone hot walks up to'em? Now add her being twice as tall as him and you get guys who c'n barely for-formula-hate a thou-hought."

She leaned against his shoulder, snuggling into it like it was a pillow. "Thanks. You're not so bad y'rself. An' you got a cute butt."

He stared at the wall. "So where _do_ women get that 'let's be friends'-bit from. Cos' it really hurts, y'know?"

"No clue. Never worked for me either."

He took another swig, and then set the bottle down. "So, maybe we should head on home. Yeah?"

No reply. Just a soft sniffling sound, and a gentle draft on his shoulder. He looked down. Yep. Fast asleep.

"Well, _damn_."

…

Web-swinging through New York with a drunken She-Hulk on your shoulder was difficult enough as it was without being mildly intoxicated yourself, but somehow he managed. About halfway through town he remembered he had no idea where she lived, though, so he stopped on a rooftop to try and get directions.

It took several attempts to get her awake enough to give an address, and then she was out cold again. Luckily he knew the whole city like the back of his gloves, so finding the place wasn't too hard. A cheap loft apartment on the Lower East Side, which was perfect, the skylight open to the night air, even better.

He gently deposited her on the huge queen-size bed that dominated the east wall of the apartment and pulled the covers up to her chin. She was adorable when sleeping. He watched her for a few seconds, then used the cover to wipe a little bit of drool from the corner of her mouth.

Before he left he took a last look at her apartment. Not much personal. An old photograph of a brown-haired teen girl, a big, burly-looking guy in sheriff's uniform, and a brown-haired woman who had a vague resemblance to the girl . The girl looked happy, the man looked cranky and the woman looked...afraid? He set it down.

There was a large kitchenette with a few piles of dirty dishes, a big flatscreen TV, a reproduction of the Andy Warhol Marylin prints, some flowers in need of watering, and an old group painting of the Avengers. Before Scarlet Witch almost destroyed the world.

Suddenly he felt like an intruder, a burglar rifling through somebody's life treasures, and he was about to jump out the window when a pair of strong, green arms wrapped around his chest from behind, a large, green face leaning on his shoulder, her cheek against his.

"Good days, that. Before life went weird."

He shrugged. Boy, she smelled good. Like jasmine. "I wouldn't know. When that stuff went down I was going through some really dark, weird stuff with a horrifying monster called Morlun. Almost killed me."

She snorted softly, snuggling closer. It occurred to him that the way she was leaning on him was a bit...intimate.

"Well, know what _I_ do when life looks that bad?"

He almost didn't want to ask. But he did. "No...what?"

She pulled up his mask and kissed him.

…

* * *

…

Jen Walters woke up, slowly, her head throbbing like someone had put a jackhammer inside it and left it on the highest setting. _Oh, God._ What did she _do_ last night?

She remembered feverish love-making, gentle hands caressing every inch of her, being serviced in a way few men _ever_ thought of, then penetration that actually _hurt_ a little like nothing had hurt since she was nineteen and losing her virginity to Jack Freedman in her college freshman law courses, then...

Then she remembered, vaguely, what she had been doing earlier. Fighting some Russian MGH freak, getting well and truly hammered on beer and medicinal alcohol provided by a crabby bartender, buying a drink for...oh. Oh, no. _Him_?

She glanced over, and saw a very masculine form sleeping on the bed besides her. He was lying with his head turned away, his back towards her. Muscular back. Lots of faint scars. Brown hair curly with dried sweat. A nice, manly smell of musk and sex and sweat and..._very_ cheap deodorant. She smirked. Okay, he wasn't bad-looking, then. She'd always kind of assumed he was some hideous freak under that big big-eyed mask of his, but her faint recollection of what happened after they both got naked didn't suggest her screaming in horror or anything.

But she _hated_ him. Didn't she? She'd never made a secret of how she thought he was really annoying, a wisecracking pest who never, _ever_ shut up, even when he should. Sleeping with him was the _last_ thing on her mind. Right?

_Well, they _do_ say that attraction always starts with arguments..._

She blushed, strangling that treacherous thought in its cradle. _No way._ A one-time fling, that's what it was, and...okay, she did remember the sex being _damned_ good (from what little she could recall she remembered thinking Tony freaking _Stark_ could take lessons), _and_ he was cute, what she could see of him, and that butt that looked so good in his tights sure looked even _better_ out of them and God no she had to stop _thinking_ about this. Like, right now.

_What do I do, what do I do, what do I do..._

He stirred, and turned slightly, and when his face became visible she felt herself go pale. _Holy_...she _recognized_ this guy.

She'd had him on the witness stand once.

_And on the floor, and the bed, and the kitchen counter, and-shut up!_

"Peter..._Parker_?" Her voice was barely a whisper.

He was a photographer, working for the Daily Bugle back then. He'd been involved in a civil suit against Spider-Man, on the plaintiff's side. In fact, he was known for his Spider-Man pictures.

The corners of her mouth twitched. Okay, he'd been involved in his own _trial_? Testifying against _himself_? This was...oh, man. This was just weird. And kind of funny.

_As weird as sleeping with him when you supposedly hate the guy?_

She took a deep breath, looking around the room for her clothes. Panties, there. Bra, there. Question was, should she go for the costume or her every-day clothing? Well, she had no job to go back to, so...and she didn't feel like doing the heroine gig today. What she did feel like, deep down, when she finally admitted to it, was to put on a robe, pig out on ice cream and watch her FarScape DVD's. Seasons three and four, to be precise. The unhappy ones.

_No, what you _really_ want to do is crawl back in bed with the cute and super-strong brunette and-_

She took a deep breath, banishing the thought from her mind even if it made her stomach feel warm and other parts damp. No, that would be a _bad_ idea. One-night stand. Nothing more.

…

Peter Parker opened his eyes and realized he wasn't at home. Or wearing his mask. or wearing anything at all, really. _Oh God. What did I do? What did I _do_? I can't - I shouldn't - no, no, no, no._

The bed smelled like jasmine. A _woman's_ perfume. It also smelled like female musk and sweat and sex and...a faint whiff of old alcohol. Okay, he'd been offered a beer by a drunken She-Hulk, who, while she _was_ a very _impressive_ woman she also had a tendency to...what was the term for it again...oh yeah, _hate his guts._ One had become two. Then three. Then four. Then five. Then he lost count.

And now he was in a strange apartment in someone's bed (_big_ bed), on the nightstand next to him on top of his mask was a lacy, white bra (_big_ bra) and there draped over a chair on top of his left boot was a pair of lacy white thong panties (_big_ thong panties). On the book shelf by the other side was a group painting of the old Avengers, before he joined as a full member way back.

_Oh no._

…

"...hi."

She had ended up putting on just her raggedy, threadbare old tee, the one lacking sleeves and with the belly cut off (the one that fit like a bag on Jennifer and showed off _way_ too much under-boob on Jen but was her only clean tee right now) and a pair of plain white boxers left by a boy-toy many years ago, and then her big robe that even though it was made for big-and-tall people still ended just above her knees. If she didn't know any better she'd think it was because she was trying to look casually sexy. Which was blatantly untrue and beneath any proper response.

_Sure it is._

She waved a hand lamely at the kitchenette. "There's...there's coffee. If you want."

_And then, how about another romp, big boy? Shut up shut up shut up!_

He nodded. _Damn_, he was cute. He looked worn out, though. Not from the past night, no, this looked more like old worry lines. Wait, motormouth Spidey worrying? What would _he_ worry about?

_He told you a lot about what last night, remember? Oh, wait, you can't._

He scrambled around for his clothes. Boxers (ugh, tighty-whiteys), sleeveless tee. White socks. Then he padded over to the kitchen counter and grabbed a mug from the cupboard, poured and drank it black. Huh. She'd figured him for a milk-and-sugar sort of fellow. _Just goes to show._

She had to bite her tongue when suddenly a memory flashed of her seated on top of the counter and him hammering into her, she'd been screaming and wrapping her legs around his waist and...

No, that way waited madness. _And damp panties._

He peered at her from over the rim of the mug. Big, brown eyes. Hazel. He looked nervous.

"Look, I-"

"I just-"

They both stopped. Took a sip, or gulp.

"Good coffee."

"Yeah. Emma Frost sends me a batch every now and then." _Take me now. Shut up!_

Awk_ward_.

"Cool."

God, could this get _any_ more embarrassing? _No, please don't answer that._

"So I-"

"It's not-"

"Sorry, you first."

"No, you first."

She tried to fixate away from that pretty face. Like his hands. Yes, that was safe. Harmless.

_His hands moved like an expert pianist on her bare skin, one under her back, the other deftly manipulating her folds and oh oh oh OH so good so good-_

She blinked. Okay, _not_ his hands.

Where the _hell_ did he learn that _anyway_?

He was staring. He blushed. He was cute even when he blushed.

_But I don't go for _cute_! I go for big, strong, masculine, broad-shouldered. Guys like...like...Hercules. Okay, _bad_ example. But he's like...slender. Like a dancer or something. Like Baryshnikov. Right._

_Except I had a massive crush on Baryshnikov when I was seventeen and saw White Nights for the first time._

"Um, so...we, ah...last night."

"Yeah."

_Scintillating conversation, there, Jen. Exciting!_

He smiled nervously. "Um...so. Peter Parker. I think you grilled me in the hot seat once. Sorry about the deception."

Okay, that was _not_ what she had thought he'd say.

"Yeah. I...sort of recognized you. Earlier this morning."

He nodded. "Of _course_ you did. Why _wouldn_'t you?"

He seemed to be talking more to himself than anything else, though. She resisted the urge to reach out and tousle his hair. It was _cute_ hair, though.

_His hair was like silk in her fingers as she gripped it tightly, lying on her back on the living room carpet and screaming in pure-_

Right. No more of _that._

"So..."

"So..."

They both looked at the other, and chuckled nervously.

"Um. I should...I should..."

_Yes? Yes? You should what? Tear my robe off and remove what little I wear underneath with your teeth?_

"...go. Um. I...I don't remember that much but...um..."

"You...you think this was a mistake?"

He paled. "No! No, no, no, no, no. No. Not a _mistake_. Maybe...I guess we both needed _that_. Well, that and we were kind of..."

_Drunk. Okay, sure. It was a drunken mistake. Great. Just fine. _

"Yeah. We were." Did her voice turn cold?

"Um. So...I suppose...maybe we should...stay friends? Maybe?"

"Yes." Okay, _that_ was definitely frosty.

There were a few more nervous attempts at conversation. He tried joking, something self-deprecating, she didn't really listen. The little voice in the back of her mind was nagging at her, telling her all sorts of things she didn't like thinking about.

Then he was gone, leaving only an empty coffee mug behind. She took a deep, ragged breath and started up on the dishes.

_Just a one night stand. Sure, he's cute, but he's not my type. Not at all. Just because what I remember of last night is hours of mind-blowing sex, just because he's kind of sweet-looking, just because we kind of connected with our sucky lives last evening even though I barely remember the details, just because...right. Nothing. Just friends. _His_ idea._

She put the last plate in the drying stand, unplugged the sink and leaned against the counter. Another deep, ragged breath.

_I bet he likes blonds. And redheads. _

She frowned. Where the hell did _that_ come from?

…

* * *

…

"...shall meet your doom! So speaketh Kang! The Conqueror!"

"Kang rhymes with 'spang', you know that, right?" Spider-Man dodged out of the way of an energy blast that would have turned him to ashes had it hit. The time-traveling world conqueror was getting _annoyed_. He had the benefit of centuries of advanced technology and devices letting him see the immediate future, and still this aggravating pest, this, this..._bug_, managed to dodge his every punch, every blast, every _move_. And how in the accursed name of the Askani witches had he managed to reverse the polarity on his temporal inducer? One moment he was turning the world slowly backwards through time, the next it snapped back to 2010 with a recoil that caused half the devices in his armor to burn out instantly.

"'_Spang_'? Have you gone ma-"

A disk-shaped, star-spangled object slammed into Kang the Conqueror's head from behind with a solid, melodic 'SPANG!'. The futuristic megalomaniac staggered, grasping his head in pain.

"Stand down, Kang! Your plans have been thwarted, your devices taken down. There's no where to-"

But as Captain America retrieved his mighty shield, the time-marauder pushed a button on his wrist, and in a flash of light and a tiny clap of thunder he was gone.

"...damn."

…

He was never one for parties. Never knew who to talk to. Even the parties thrown for him had been awkward affairs, from which he would escape as soon as possible.

But being an Avenger had its responsibilities. Like attending victory parties where everyone and anyone who had ever been an Avenger was invited. He thought he'd even seen D-Man, briefly, dressed in clean clothes for once, with a girl who claimed to be his nurse. The guy had mental issues, and Tony had fixed him up with proper insurance and health care in exchange for the homeless hero agreeing to be a spokesman for socialized healthcare. For a heartless (literally) capitalist, Tony sure liked leftist stuff.

But he barely knew any of them. Some of them had even tried to put him behind bars, a few of them more than once. Nobody here was his friend, not really. Captain...no, _Steve_, now, not Captain. _Steve_ was off doing his own thing somewhere. The _new_ Cap was _not_ a friend. In fact, he felt kind of cold, and that wasn't a crack about the metal arm. Tony Stark was...well, after the whole Civil War mess they weren't as good friends as they had been. The guy had more issues than a daily newspaper. He grabbed a glass of non-alcoholic bubbly and went outside on the balcony.

…

It was a huge, extended happy family and he felt more isolated than ever before.

Oh, he'd joined up. You didn't say no to Steve Gosh-darn Rogers. It was for the good of all, helping save people, helping out, being treated a little better by law enforcement and getting a bit more of a reputation in the hero community...

...but he rarely felt as if he _belonged_. Maybe it was because he started out so young, had felt so alienated as a kid and had never really lost that sensation. He'd been an outcast through high school, alone and ignored in college, a loner when working for the Bugle, and a loner when being Spidey. With the only exceptions being working with Veronica, Johnny, Bobby or Felicia. And those times were rare indeed. Maybe because his luck tended to rub off on people. Team up with Spidey, lose your friends and family! _There_ was a recruitment slogan he could use. Right along 'Vote Spidey! The other white meat'.

"Nice night."

He froze. He knew that voice. Deep, husky, coming from a point slightly above his head. Well, and behind him, but still. He relaxed. They were friends, right? "Yeah. Why aren't _you_ in there partying? I think I saw Ben Grimm start up the karaoke machine."

She-Hulk...no, it was _Jen_. She preferred being called by her real name. ...leaned on the railing next to him, both elbows up front and her hands dangling free. She was wearing her costume, much like everyone else at the party (including his own self).

_She looks better in her robe. _He blushed, grateful that he was wearing the mask.

"Nah. When old blue-eyes start singing, cats in New Jersey start screaming. Besides, it's a beautiful night."

_Not as beautiful as you. Shut up, Pete. You're being sappy and corny again._

Out loud, he said; "You can see the George Washington Bridge from here."

She followed his gaze toward the lit-up bridge, and nodded. She smiled. "Why, you a bridge nut or something? Bridges of Manhattan County?"

He shook his head. "The first woman I ever loved died there."

She froze, then turned to stare at him.

_Oh, that was _crap_, Pete. Now she thinks you set her up for that. Dick move, man. Total dick move._

But instead she just kept looking at him, her face softening a bit. "Was it an accident?"

"No. Norman Osborn." _Why on Earth am I telling her this?_

She flinched. "So when you guys took him down in Oklahoma a few months back..."

"Yeah. It was a _lot_ more personal for me than for any of them."

She put her hand over his. It was a bit bigger, but still feminine. Long, slender fingers, well-manicured fingernails. Just...on a larger scale. And green. And comfortably warm. "You loved her very much."

He nodded. "I kinda lost myself for a while after that. Almost killed him when I caught him, back then."

Her hand stayed where it was. "Why didn't you?"

He shrugged. "Because...because I've seen his _true_ face. And I don't mean the hysterical, ranting and raving Goblin that got plastered all over the news when Tony unmasked him. The one everyone saw in Oklahoma. And not the manipulative assface businessman Norman Osborn either. No, I've seen what he hides _beneath_ those two."

Leaning forward, but not removing his hand, he stared out at the waters and the bridge and the memories.

"He's insane. Not the typical supervillain insane, either. No, he's got a whole bundle of real, certifiable illnesses that he can't really control no matter what he tells hospital or prison boards. Paranoid schizophrenia. Delusional psychoses (note the plural). Hallucinatory dissociative paranoid episodes. A shrink I used to know actually diagnosed him for me once.

"But under all that is little Norman. A pathetic, selfish, narcissistic little _boy_ who hides under his bully personalities to hurt anyone who says no to him. When the Goblin and Osborn are peeled away, all you get is this...blubbering _manchild_ who has great capacity that he never uses."

He hadn't noticed how his voice had turned angry and sad, but all of a sudden she was holding him from behind much like...no, best not think about that time. _Just friends._

_Right._

But then they were kissing again, and she was pressing herself against him, and...she grinned into his mouth.

"So..._not_ friends, huh."

He grinned right back, kissed her lips lightly, quickly. "Guess not."

"Wanna get out of here?"

"Oh yeah."

* * *

…

**TBC**


	2. Chapter 2

**Elsewhere**

In the Astral Plane, things work differently. It isn't _people_ that dwell there, but concepts, ideas, embodiments. Personifications. Here ideologies do battle in physical form, or what passes for physical where everything is astral. Here you find old, lost Gods, no longer worshiped, crying mournfully in the howling winds of spirit that scours the plane constantly.

And Death is not permanent here.

…

The entity was hungry. It had died not long ago, a death unworthy of such a sublime entity, and this death had been humiliating, horrifying...infuriating. But mostly, it was hungry. Returning from nothing was hard work and required much energy, and the entity was starving. Here in the Astral, few of the entity's favorite prey wandered these days. The most powerful ones were haunting the Physical Strata, playing, gallivanting...forgetting their proper place.

Yes, it had to go Physical again. It would be dangerous. But this time it was certain that nothing, no-_one_, would stand in its way.

And the Shathra would feed once more.

…

* * *

…

**The Physical Strata, Earth 616. **

Jen Walters lay staring at the ceiling, her eyes wide as saucers, her face a mixture between horror, fear, pure bliss and general uncertainty. She glanced over at the sleeping form beside her, took in his shape slowly, just to be certain, and then continued staring at the ceiling.

I_ did this. I was _sober_. Nothing stronger than fake bubbly. _We_ did this. We. I slept with him again._

The uncertain smile went wider.

_And it was Great._

She bit her lower lip. That thing he did with his tongue, and the teeth, and...

Her face heated up.

_Magnificent._

Best sex of her life? Probably.

_Who the hell taught him?_

Then the horror, fear and uncertainty returned. Because she could find no good reason why she was hung up on this guy. Okay, he was a lot nicer when he wasn't cracking wise at all times. In fact, he was sensitive, honest, attentive...she'd told him about Wyatt, for crying out loud! She never even talked to _John_ about Wyatt. But with him the words flowed. And he _understood_. He told her about Mary-Jane (the famous model-slash-actress? Redheaded sex-bomb in Michael Bay's _Gobots_-movies? _Really_?), she told him about fighting the Champion, he told her about being Captain Universe for a day...

Oh yeah, and the sex had been mind-blowing. But the sex, however awesome, felt like...a bonus.

She glanced to her other side. The titanium vase she kept had been smashed. She'd never managed that before. Not in the throes of passion. And it sure as hell was Passion. With a capital P.

_I don't think I've ever felt like this before._

She rolled to the side, turning her back towards him. Her expression was slowly turning into pure horror.

_Oh, crap.  
_

…

* * *

…

The sun was rising when he woke up. For a while he just lay there, basking in the warmth through the big window and the heat coming from the seven foot green woman sleeping next to him.

Okay.

So.

Where to now?

_Actually, I kind of like the idea of staying right here. She smells nice. She _is_ nice. And I think she bruised three ribs on me during..._

He blushed slightly, then slowly sat up, getting out of the bed. Shorts. T-shirt. Socks? No, he wasn't leaving... Pants. _Damn_. Only the costume pants. Well, they'd have to do. A little sore, but it'd be fine. He healed quickly.

_Okay. What can we find in the fridge? Let's see now...oh horror of horrors, I think this Chinese food helped build the California railroad. In the trash. And this...and this...so what _does_ she have? Hmmm. Eggs. Good. Toast. Excellent. Milk?_

He sniffed it.

_Not bad. Yet. On the last couple days, though. Use it now or watch it turn into bad cottage cheese. Okay, so I can make French toast. It's a start. What else? Maybe I can drop by that little corner shop quickly, I do have the webshooters with me..._

…

* * *

…

She opened her eyes. Okay, what was that..._cinnamon_? Sugar. Butter. _Oranges_? She sat up, stretched, just in time to be presented with a tray, a single rose, and her favorite mug filled with fresh-brewed coffee.

She stared at it. "What the..."

He was grinning. "French toast with a hint of orange juice in the batter, fresh coffee, a rose as fair as thee, though I couldn't find any green ones (doubt they exist), oh, and the morning paper."

She looked up at his grinning face, felt herself blush. "Did you...did you make _breakfast_? I think that's the first time in a _long_ while that a guy has...wait, where'd you get the ingredients?"

"Fridge. Had to toss out the sentient cultures of former foodstuffs now bent on world domination, but you had _some_ stuff I could use. Hey, I grew up in a small working class home in Queens, my aunt had to make do with an electrician's pension checks. You learn to cook simple."

She took a bite of the toast. Heaven! He smirked, then grabbed a napkin and dabbed her chin.

"Got a little butter there."

She gave him a mock-angry glare, then continued snarfing down the breakfast. She stopped, staring down at the plate.

"Aren't you having any?"

"I already ate. Besides, it's fun watching you eat. You remind me of the Cookie Monster."

Her jaw dropped. "I _what_? Why you-"

Smirking, he stoppered her mouth by kissing her soundly. They didn't talk much for a while after that.

…

Breakfast went by too quickly for her tastes, interspersed with kisses and some very heavy petting as it was, but when he held out his t-shirt and sniffed it while solemnly proclaiming that he needed to shower, she didn't need much convincing to join him.

About forty-five wet, strange (turned out being able to stick to walls was _very_ useful, not to mention he could extend the benefit by simply keeping skin-to-skin contact at all times) and very..._exhausting_ minutes later they were dressed and headed in either direction. And she realized she wanted to see him again.

"So, um...do you have a cell number?"

He smiled awkwardly, mask in hand. "I keep losing or breaking them. After the last one got eaten by subway crocodiles I kinda stopped trying to keep one."

Her heart sank a little. "_Oh_. Yeah, I...have the same problem."

_No you don't. Usually whomever you're working for throws them at you more quickly than you can use them up._

He smirked. _Such a cute smirk._ "No you don't. But thanks for commiserating. I _do_ have a home address, though. And...ever since that whole spideybites website thing took off I've been-"

"Say what?" She stared at him, stunned.

"What?"

"You...you're behind 'spideybites'?"

He nodded. "Yeah. Nobody wanted to buy my photos, thanks to this stupid thing I did a while back, and, well...my roomie knows computers and helped me set up a webpage a while back, I finally started using it and all of a sudden I was webmaster, pardon the pun, of my own self-mocking site. Imagine, I get paid money for all the goofy things I've done and fought over the years."

If he'd poked her with a feather right now she just might've fallen over. "You're...I _subscribe_ to that."

He grinned. "Awesome. Another ten bucks in my bank account. Soon I will have enough to buy Stark Industries! Mwah-hah-haa!"

"No, no, no. You own spideybites dot com. _You_. Nobody else?"

"...yes?"

"Wow. Just...wow."

The grin faltered a bit. "Is that a bad wow or a good wow?"

"Good one. Definitely a good one. That one of you fighting the Kangaroo? Made my day."

He shrugged, blushing a bit. "Well, the dude is silly enough as he is. Can't believe I actually had to _fight_ the guy. More than once. Kicks harder than Shang Chi. Seriously. Dude can break steel girders with those legs. Still silly, though."

"...yeah. So you were saying?"

He gave her a peck on the cheek. "I was _saying_, that since I have my own domain I also have more than one e-mail. Including a private one. Hang on..."

Fishing around in his tight costume pants (why had she never noticed how flattering those were before?) he soon pulled out a small, slim wallet, taking out a cheap business card the likes of which one bought in bulk. Just his name, home phone, e-mails and web addresses. Simple.

"_Thank_ you. This your home phone?"

"Yeah. I share it with my roomie, so no personal calls. She's...aggressive about that."

"_She_?"

"Michele. Don't worry, she's not my type."

"Who's worried?"

_Right. A female roomie. Doesn't bode well. _

_Wait...am I being _jealous_? Oh, crap. _

…

* * *

…

In an alley not too far from Macy's, an old vagrant was eating his daily spoils while seated behind a dumpster. His name had been important, once. He'd been a big man in business. Then that damned _Parker_ had shown up alongside that snooping sneak Urich. The annoying four-eyed dork had distracted him while Parker snuck around the factory taking pictures, and the next day the headlines were 'Local pillar of community runs illegal sweatshop in Hell's Kitchen!'

In just a few months he'd been _ruined_. Now he wandered the streets alongside people he'd once sneered at, people he'd called lazy for not having what he had. Oh, if he ever saw that damned Parker again...

The air _opened_.

No other word could describe it. The air opened, and out came a pair of long and slender obsidian-colored legs, equally long and slender obsidian arms..._four_ of them. Then a pitch black head with faintly glowing yellow orbs for eyes, a pair of antennas, and huge wings, faintly translucent in the morning light.

The creature stood for a few seconds, swaying in the wind, wings spreading behind it as if drying in the sun. Then it turned towards him. "_You_ have _his_ scent." Her inflection was strange, as if speaking out loud was alien to her.

His mouth opened and closed, silently, like a fish. No words came out.

"You have his _scent_. You _have_ been touched _by_ his essence. I will take it _from_ you."

When she opened her quivering mouth-parts, hitherto invisible, he finally began to scream.

…

* * *

…

"Name, rank and serial number?"

"Jennifer Walters, I was a level 12 operative search and retrieval, serial number 1334299870-12."

"Right. Sign here, please."

She leaned forward, signing the dotted line and crossing the T's and dotting the I's...

"Well all right then. Your property is available on lot 43."

…

She stared sadly at the car she had once, in her heart of hearts, referred to as Broomhilda. Once, she could fly this baby from New York to New Mexico in less than an hour, once she could take joyrides through the New York skyline for the fun of it...

Broomhilda would never fly again. Or drive down the highway. Or do much of anything.

A crazy Skrull with an attitude had ripped the engine block apart, and the poor dear had gone down in a lake somewhere west downstate. She sighed. A flying car. She'd always wanted one of those. Then she _got_ one of those. And somebody broke it.

That wasn't the worst part. The worst part was that it got smashed at a point where she couldn't afford Act of Superhuman insurance, which meant there was no way of having it replaced or fixed even if it was fixable. And no money.

She had about three months left before she got kicked out of her apartment, no car, no money, no job, and oh yeah, she might be having a thing for a guy she'd always hated.

Or at least actively disliked.

The horrible thing was...he was a _nice guy_. A _genuinely_ nice guy. They'd talked a bit, in between earth-shattering romps in the bed and, ah, _elsewhere_ in her apartment, and he'd had a really bad life. Got his powers early, had to fight psychopaths and monsters, lost half his family and loved ones...some of the things he'd suffered would make _Bruce_ weep.

_Buried alive for a week while a psychotic loon ran around in his costume. Jesus._

"Figured I'd find you here."

She turned, and smiled at one of her oldest friends. "Hey, Sue. What brings you out here?"

"You, actually. Reed is looking into patenting some of his latest stuff and we want a good all-round lawyer. And since I heard..."

"No charity, Sue."

"No charity. It's a real job. Look, we're low on funding, and...well, you're the best one we know, and the only one I can think of who won't have an ulterior motive. We're willing to hire you on a case by case basis, but it's going to be sporadic, at best. Building upkeep, equipment costs..." The list petered out. "It's real. No charity."

Then, "...so what's the deal with the wreckage?"

"It used to be my car. _Flying_ car, actually. Got smashed in that whole Skrull thing. 'He loves us', but apparently not our vehicles, " Jen poked the metal. "I'm gonna have it junked, but figured paying for taking it to the junkyard is kind of pointless when I can carry it myself."

"I have the Fantasticar with me, I can-"

"_Deal_."

Sue laughed. "I figured you wouldn't take me up on that one."

"Hey, _I'm_ not carrying this damn thing halfway cross town, it'd look _silly_."

…

So halfway across town Sue turned to her, switched on the autopilot and raised an eyebrow.

"Okay, spill."

"What?"

"You know what I mean. Two months ago you were ready to call everything quits. Now you're smiling all the time."

"Am not."

"Are too. So what's his name?"

"What makes you think there's a he?"_ Damn, she noticed._

"Because I've only seen you like this twice, and both times it was because of a man. What's his name?"

"Well, it's...nothing serious. _Really_. We've...it's just sex, so far. Twice."

Sue gave her an arch look. "Twice _is_ serious with you, Jen."

"Hey! I resemble that remark!" She leaned back, letting the warm summer wind whip her hair about.

"Is it someone in the business?"

"...yes."

"Someone we know?"

She didn't answer. Unfortunately, this didn't work.

"It is, isn't it? Someone you dated before?"

This one was safe! "Nope."

"Is it Hercules?"

"_God_, no. Besides, isn't he dead right now?"

"He's a god. They don't stay dead for long."

"Point. Look, it's _our_ business, it's just a casual thing, we both needed someone to lean on for a while and I'm not telling you even a single word more until you wipe that smug grin off your face, _capisce_?"

"Sorry."

"You're still smirking."

"Sorry."

"Not _helping_!"

By now, Sue was shaking with held-back laughter. "_I'm sorry_! It's just...usually, you brag to the high heavens about guys you date. To see you all blushing and close-lipped is _so_ not like you. You _gotta_ spill, for the sake of my sanity or I'll go nuts trying to find out! I mean, it's not a villain or anything, right?"

Jen hesitated, which Sue took as confirmation. "Oh God, you _can't_ be serious. _Jen_, you-"

"_It's not a villain_!" She took a deep breath. "It's just...he's...I don't want to..." The rest came out in a quiet mumble as they approached the Baxter Building. "I don't wanna jinx it, _okay_?"

The Fantasticar landed softly on the roof, and Jen grabbed the remains of Broomhilda from the surprisingly roomy trunk. "You sure Johnny can fix this?"

"He fixed up the Spidey-Mobile once, and that was after it got dumped in the East River. If anyone can, he will."

She hoped Sue wouldn't notice the way she flinched when Spidey was brought up. Fortunately, she didn't. As they entered the garage area they deposited Broomhilda's corpse on the floor, then went through the security checkpoint to the living areas.

"Auntie Jenny!" A blond tot rushed forward, face lit up.

"Hey there, Frankie-boy. _Man_, you're growing fast. In a couple years I won't be able to even lift you!" To demonstrate she made huffing and puffing groans as she picked the six-year-old up from the floor. He giggled.

"You're silly. Everyone knows you're stronger'n everyone. Stronger than Uncle Ben even!"

"Oh, I dunno about that." She leaned in close, gave him a peck on the cheek and stage-whispered, "It depends on if he's had any spinach that day or not. Everyone knows spinach makes you stronger. It's why I'm green!" He giggled again.

Setting him down he rushed off, presumably to fetch something to show off. At this point she noticed the serious-looking little girl who stood nearby, looking very crossly at her.

"Oh, hello Valeria. I'd give you a hug and a kiss too, only I don't know if that's all that _interesting_ for someone of your _vast_ intellect."

The girl pursed her lips, then nodded. "A hug and kiss _would_ be emotionally gratifying. I'll allow it, in spite of your patronizing tone." As she was swept up and thoroughly kissed on the forehead and cheeks, she gave Jen a suspicious look. "Only for today, all right?"

"Certainly."

As Valeria started talking solemnly about her attempts to prove Stephen Hawking a moron and Franklin rushed in with one of his toys, Sue hushed them both with a look, shooing them out of the living room. "Franklin, I _know_ you have homework, and Valeria, _last_ time you cleaned out your room was when the Inhumans visited. Now away with you both, your auntie Jenny and I have a lot of catching up to do."

"Aw, _mo-om_! I wanted to show Jenny my new Lego X-Wing!"

"I fail to see how aesthetically re-arranging the clutter in my room would be in any way constructive."

"No arguments! _Off_ with you." The two children left, reluctantly, and Sue smiled after them. "Such a bunch of trouble-makers. But they're both worth it. So, you were saying?"

Oh, no, she _wasn't_ going to fall for _that_ one.

"_I_ wasn't saying anything."

"Eh, it was worth a try. So why the secrecy? I mean, you say he's not a villain, there's nothing wrong with him as far as I've been able to tell from what you've revealed, and you like him enough to take it easy instead of rushing ahead like you usually do. So what's the big problem?"

Jen sat down, buried her face in her hands and rubbed her eyes a bit. What _was_ the problem? Why _didn't_ she want to talk about this? There was nothing _wrong_ with him as such, as far as she knew it wasn't a _serious_ thing, and besides, she'd dated men Sue wouldn't touch with a ten-foot-pole (and Sue had a tiny spark for a guy who always smelled like _fish_ for heaven's sake), he certainly wasn't in _that_ category and she had talked about _them_ enough to fill a Jackie Collins novel...so why did she not want to tell anyone about Peter?

_Because I've always put him down._

She stared at the floor. Was it really that easy? Pride? Well, to hell with pride. Pride was what made you stay with an abusive dad, pride was what made you fight some alien wacko just because he insulted you, pride was...pride was stupid.

_Okay._

_Right._

_Deep breath._

_And another deep breath._

"Spider-Man. I'm sort of kind of maybe seeing Spider-Man. And I think...I _think_ I have a problem with that."

To her own great relief, Sue neither goggled or gasped or looked more shocked than normal. Instead she simply raised her eyebrows and nodded, taking this in. "That's...not a bad choice, really. I've known him for years now, ever since he was just a kid who thought we were paid for doing the whole team thing and tried to get hired on, but he's a good guy. A _real_ good guy. Sometimes he takes the whole world on his shoulders, but he's not a bad one at all, Jen. So what problem could there be?"

Okay. No stopping now. She'd gotten this far, no reason to quit halfway.

"...because I think I might be taking this a bit more seriously than he is. And I might be freaking out a bit by that thought."

…

* * *

…

Peter Parker checked the shutter speed, made sure the flash was off, and prepared to get a picture of mayor J Jonah Jameson. He was still freelancing in spite of most papers having blacklisted him. Putting his photos up on stock photo sites to be downloaded for a pittance per use was Michele's idea, as was expanding _spideybites_ to carry t-shirts and hoodies. Still, while he wasn't rolling in cash it was at least _something_. And it paid his rent.

Which was probably why his more Internet-savvy room mate kept giving him good ideas and helping him with the world-wide-tubes.

He really _had_ to get up to snuff on the more every-day stuff. He was good at technology. Mechanics, physics, electronics, engineering, chemistry, all these things were his life's blood. He could put together a computer in less than ten minutes if given satisfactory parts, he could build a transmitter that affected psionic talents...and he didn't know what a POP-server or 'HTML' was. The Internet had sort of snuck up on him, along with cellphones, digital cameras and that Avatar movie with the giant blue cat people.

He'd asked Bobby, who was a bit of a veteran when it came to aliens due to being an X-Man, but apparently no such species existed that he knew of. Closest thing were those bipedal humanoid skunks someone called 'Hepzibah' belonged to. Too bad.

_Neytiri looked kinda like Jen. Not as pretty, though._

He felt a flush rise in his cheeks and he hid it by pretending to double-check the camera. _Down, boy. She's...out of your league. Don't get your hopes up. Parker luck won't let you down. Give it a week and she'll hate you._

The doors opened and he looked up, camera in front. Okay...

...

* * *

…

"If there's something _strange_ - in your _neighbor_hood. _Who_ ya gonna call-"

"_Shut up_, Danny. I'm _trying_ to meditate." Jericho Drumm frowned, trying not to let his creaky joints get to him. Getting the whole lotus position thing down was hard enough as it was without a dead brother with the attention span of a gnat buzzing around in your apartment.

"Well, I'm _bored_. Couldn't you at least leave the TV on? There's a FarScape rerun on SyFy I wanna see. Kinda missed the episode due to being a bit _dead_ at the time."

"...sometimes you are _such_ a white man."

"Hey! Being a geek does not necessarily mean being _white_. Just ask Donald Glover. Funny man, black geek just like me."

"Before you died you hadn't even watched a single episode of Star Trek."

He felt the cool presence of his brother hovering just over his shoulder. "So? Nothing to do in the afterlife except watch TV and gossip about the living. Kinda like unemployment, that way. By the way, your map is pinging."

Jericho opened an eye, glancing at the map he had adorned with seeker spells and wards. It was a sort of early warning system, showing mystical activity in the city (he had one for the entire US and one for the world, as well, but somehow everything mystical seemed to want to focus on New York). Usually it was just minor things, a vampire here, someone using an Ouija board there...and then you got spikes like this one. Literally. A massive spike of glowing green light centered on an alley behind Macy's.

"Ah, _hell_. Major spirit entity on the loose. The loas are _not_ gonna be happy..."

…

* * *

…

"...'Bite me'." Peter held up the t-shirt to the light. "In big block letters. With Spidey being bitten on the leg by a crazed Humbug."

Michele beamed at him. "Great, aren't they? You already have over seventy pre-orders. After the costs, sales taxes and my fee...you're looking at eight dollars a t-shirt in pure profit."

He laid the suspicious one-eye on her. "Your 'fee'? Since when do you have a fee?"

"Since you couldn't do this on your own. Seriously, you fixed my mp3-player with an old screwdriver and your soldering gun and you can't figure out even a WYSIWYG editor?" She smirked at his blank stare.

"Woozy-what-now?"

"What you see is what you get. WYSIWYG." She tossed the bundle of pre-packaged shirts on the couch. He noticed that the back of the shirt had a logo. More accurately, a stylized Spidey-head...with cartoonish cross-eyes. Beneath it was the website address.

"Okay, I get this one. The hats?"

"Oh, you're gonna love these. Check it!" She whipped out a fairly standard-looking black baseball cap, adorned with the cross-eyed Spidey-face, over which was embossed 'SPIDEY', beneath 'BITES'.

"They're...pretty good. The googly-eyed face, did-"

"Buddy of mine did it as a favor." She noticed his look. "What?"

"Uh...won't there be trademark issues if someone else made this for free? I mean, if he decides he wants a piece of the action?"

She looked blank. "Oh. Didn't think of that. Besides, he's a bud, he wouldn't do _that_!"

He returned the previous smirk. "Do I have to tell you about some of my best buddies? Harry Osborn, wore his dads tights as the Green Goblin, briefly, was in a loony bin in Europe while faking his own death. My ex-girlfriend Liz's big brother, Molten Man. Oh, hey, maybe I should tell you about my best friend ever, John Jameson? Y'know, the seven foot werewolf? Or my science professor in college, who turns into a giant lizard sometimes?"

She raised an eyebrow at him. "You got some seriously freaky friends, Parker."

"You don't know the _half_ of it..." He peered at the hat. "Y'know, I know a lawyer, she could...draft up a trademark thing easy as pie. Seriously, like five minutes. You got the original around?"

"Sure, in my room. Be right back."

Michele rushed into her bedroom (the disaster area) and Peter sat down, looking around the merchandise for his lost sense of self esteem. He was making actual money. Tiny amounts, yes, but enough to supplement the rent and pay bills and even help aunt May out every now and then. All legal. All thanks to his own work. That, along with the occasional boring non-action photo job and his monthly check of '_Webs_' royalties was turning into an actual nest egg at the bank.

All it took was making fun of himself on the Internet. Unveiling all the embarrassing shots he had never shown to Jonah, washing his dirty laundry in public. Allowing everyone to see the picture of him, after having fought Carrion, wearing no pants and having only shorts with little pink hearts on (they were a gift from Gwen). And yet...it felt weirdly proper and right. He'd already gotten an offer for a follow-up to Webs, with a chapter dedicated to the embarrassing stuff (it would have to be exclusives, too).

A damned tempting offer, too.

But somehow, what was really baking his noodle and making his mind race was the fact that his mind kept wandering to a certain friendly, nerdy-looking brunette he'd only ever seen in a photo. And her green alter ego who he had seen a _lot_ more of.

_Man, I have to figure this out before I go nuts._

He picked up the phone and dialed.

"Hello? Uh, Peter Parker here. Yeah. Um...this is actually a _sort_ of professional call. Yeah. Sorry. Um, I'm gonna start expanding the merchandise on the site, and Michele was a bit over-enthusiastic and had a logo made...for free...oral agreement, yeah. Uh-huh. Well, I was thinking we could maybe meet up somewhere and talk it over, _civilian_ clothes. Um. Like, lunch? Tomorrow? Really? You know any good...yeah, I don't know where that is. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Give me a landmark. Like a building. Uh-huh. Oh, right, I got it. I'll be there. Noon. Okay. Bye."

He stared at the phone briefly before hanging it up. He pursed his lips thoughtfully, took a deep, uncertain breath, and very calmly kept his cool. For about ten seconds.

He jumped up, pumping the air. "_Yes_! I have a _date_!"

…

* * *

…

_**Time Beyond Time, HQ of the Sovereign of All Eras, The Ruler of the Chronal Realms, the Temporal Tyrant.**_

Kang the Conqueror nursed the ice-pack on his neck, glaring at the many monitors displaying alternate timelines. It was getting disheartening, to be honest. Before his last jaunt back in time, every timeline had been favorable, with himself in control of Earth, sometimes the galaxy. In one he took the power of Galactus himself and used it to rule all known worlds in all known galaxies.

But not anymore. Now he watched timeline after timeline where he was a pathetic joke, a throw-away cheap punchline, a humorous diversion. In one timeline he was murdered by a Phalanx-alloyed Ultron, who was in turn destroyed by the children of that timeline's last team of Avengers. In several timelines, he sent a teenaged version of himself back in time to be victorious, only to be defeated when his younger self turned away from his own destiny. Twice. In another, he was defeated by a group of Avengers led by the daughter of Spider-Man with some actress. In yet another he was defeated permanently by a six-armed daughter of Spider-Man and...he frowned.

Wait, _this_ one was...familiar. He moved his viewer up the timeline, finding the latest embarrassing incident where the accursed bug-person tampered with his machinery and distracted him enough for the second Captain America to get through the defenses. His neck twinged, and he wished the nano-healers could work quicker.

Yes, _this_ was the focal point of his latest misfortune. In _this_ timeline, Spider-Man became a _true_ foe, an adversary like no other, and his daughter took his legacy for herself and continued the humiliation. Even worse, several centuries down the timeline he saw her descendants forming a temporal agency built entirely to prevent people like himself...

A cruel sneer formed on his face-plate. No, they wouldn't. Where was the most sensitive point in the timeline? _There_. Not long after his latest defeat (of course, 'latest' was subjective for a time traveler). A seemingly harmless incident that would have serious repercussions to the rule of Kang. No, it most certainly would not. Never. Not now, not ever.

Killing the _man_ would be simple. Finding his so-called 'secret identity' was child's play to someone who could travel in time. But killing some unknown teenager was unsatisfying, and stopping the spider's rise to power and then murdering some powerless photographer living vicariously through the exploits of other legends was not the same. No, it had to be one who knew _why,_ and be unable to do anything about it.

Spider-Man would die...

...and no-one would ever know _when_ or _where_.

He began to laugh as he fired up his chronal transducers, setting the point of exit on the night before the pivot point...

…

…

**TBC**


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Notes:** A short chapter, this one, for obvious reasons. Don't worry, all will be revealed in time. Even the seeming incongruities.

* * *

**Earth 616, Modern Era**

The usually somewhat clean and proper bedroom of Jennifer Walters (attorney at law) looked much like the Juggernaut _had_ actually been there. Clothes strewn about everywhere, on bed, floor, lamps and furniture.

The process had gone something like this: First, a highly agitated Jen had rummaged through her wardrobe for something professional-yet-sexy to wear, had found one, but then she had realized he had specified 'civilian'...meaning he wanted her to show up as Jennifer. Who had a quite different size clothing. After that, well...things had gotten a bit out of hand.

"No. No. _Yuck_, no. No. Definitely not...damn it!" She glanced at the clock. Still early. At least four hours to noon. Good. She continued going through her closets. "Hmmm...no. No..._no_...no...huh."

It was a simple outfit. Skirt ending at the knees, jacket that had been hopelessly untrendy until she'd taken needle and thread to the collar and ripped out the ridiculous shoulder-pads, after which it was just trend-less. All in simple pale gray. She'd never liked it much because it made her look paler, and it had been so expensive so as to make wearing it and risk hulking out in it a non-issue.

_Wait, does he even know what I look like as Jennifer? Ah, hell, worry about that later._

An eggshell white silk blouse and black shoes broke the gray monotony enough to make her look somewhat hot, if not as stylish as she might wish. She held it up to herself, looking at the full-body mirror. "Hmmm. Could work."

_Wish I had more to work with as Jennifer. Jen is easy to dress up, everything looks good on her as long as you get it plus-sized. Me, I'm so skinny and pale that I have to be careful I don't end up looking like an undertaker._

Damn it, _why_ had he insisted on civilian? She was so..._dull_ as Jennifer. Mousy, boring, unappealing. Leonard had once told her that unlike Bruce, both she and the green-haired psychiatrist were only _exaggerated_ versions of their original selves, since they didn't repress as much as her cousin did. Not truly alternate personalities, simply the old personalities without the inhibitions.

She found that hard to believe. Jennifer was introverted, quiet, shy, had trouble speaking in front of a jury without flop-sweating (okay, so she had worked that off with experience, but still) and shied away from contact with the opposite sex. _Jen_ was...extroverted, loud, a little pushy, and had so much self-confidence that it had made Ben Grimm look like a high school geek at times.

_What if he just likes Jen?_

…

Mulligan's was fairly upscale for a lunch restaurant, but not so much as to be expensive. The food was decent, if nothing to write poetry about, the coffee was good, and the location was amazing, overlooking most of the plaza.

Jennifer Walters glanced at her watch again. Late by half an hour. Why was he late? Was he usually late? She'd checked the news on her smart phone, nothing major happening on or near Manhattan Island. Small fire in Westchester, but that was way out of his usual routes going by the news reports on him she'd caught every now and then.

_Maybe he's forgotten about it. Or maybe he's..._

She took a deep breath. A waiter sidled up to her. "Another glass of water, miss?"

She glared at the man, but didn't snarl at him. That would be a Jen thing to do. "No, thanks. Let me have the lunch menu."

"Certainly."

…

* * *

…

Michele Gonzalez stared at the bedroom of her weirdo roomie. Okay, he was a strange one, she knew that. Friends with famous people, total screw-up even though he should be rich and famous, not to mention that whole mother-in-law's dream-guy image he projected all the time while at the same time being totally clueless in so much.

Okay, he _was_ hot. _Damn_ hot. Buff like a damn male model, from the glimpses she'd caught when he used the shared bathroom, a strong but not square face, broad shoulders, graceful like a damn ballet dancer. Still, _total_ flake. Just the sheer number of women who kept simpering around him was sickening.

But _this_ took the proverbial cake.

Half his bedroom was _gone_.

Most of his dresser, the whole bed except for one bedpost, most of the ugly rug he'd bought cheap somewhere and most of the clutter and crap he kept around his whole sleeping area.

She shook her head in sheer disbelief.

This was New York. In New York, weird things happened (though Parker seemed to get more than his fair share). When weird shit like this happened...she picked up the phone and dialed.

"_911 Emergency."_

"Yeah, is there someone you contact when really weird stuff happens?"

"_Please hold."'_

She stood there, staring at the clean edges...like a giant rectangle of the world had just been..._sheared_ off.

Then a female-sounding voice popped in. _"Fantastic Hot-line, please state the nature of your incident?"_

…

* * *

…

"And you know what happened when we looked down?" Susan Storm looked at the two children who were engrossed in her story. This had to be done _exactly_ right...

Her hands had been surreptitiously moving around them while she told them of Gorrgarr, one of the more _ridiculous_ foes they had faced back in their early days, a story that was dramatic enough to keep Franklin entertained and scientific enough to keep Valeria from making little sardonic comments on the stupidity of the average science villain.

Suddenly a gigantic hand slammed down on the table with a thump, and both children jumped!

...except the gigantic hand was a blanket, and it deflated the moment Sue let go of the force field she'd been preparing. As the children started to giggle, she followed it up by merciless tickling until they were redfaced and teary-eyed with laughter. Finally, she let them go.

Which was right about when Reed wandered in carrying one of his more advanced analysis tools, completely caught up in his own mind, not even noticing how instead of tripping over blankets and children's toys his body sort of _flowed_ over it like an overflowing river...or a giant slug. Whichever was the most disturbing.

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Sweetie? Mind explaining what's so fascinating?"

He looked up, seemingly realizing where he was only just this moment. Blinked owlishly at her, then waved the device about a bit. "Oh, I'm sure nothing..." Then he noticed the Look. The one that said_ 'don't pretend this is something unimportant I know that look on your face'._ His face fell (literally) a bit. "Well, I'm sure it's nothing...

"Reed..."

"Well, a young woman called in an incident this morning, it got filtered through the hot-line systems until finally it..."

"_Reed_."

"Well, it's just that it involves someone we know, and I didn't want to worry you so I-"

"Reed!"

He sighed, finally realizing that she always saw right through him. "There might be something strange going on with young Peter."

_Peter? Didn't Jen have a date with him today? She said it was just a professional lunch date, but..._

"You know, Reed, go ahead and investigate. Let me know what you find."

…

* * *

…

It wasn't every day you got to meet Reed Richards. Michele was not exactly used to celebrities, even if she'd gone to a couple lectures by that blind guy who'd defended Wilson Fisk all those years ago, so seeing a man seemingly made from rubber wave blinking, beeping gadgets and doodads at your apartment was...weird.

"You say you know Parker?"

Richards blinked in confusion at her feeble attempt at small talk. "Hm? Oh, yes. He was at my wedding, if you must know. Back when he worked for the Bugle. Took a very flattering picture of the, of the," the man known as Mr Fantastic blushed bright red, "ah, _kiss_, that, um, Sue had framed and..._anyway_, it seems your hunch was correct, miss Gonzalez. There's definitely been something 'hinky', as you put it. My scans show unexplained rise in neutrino levels, as well as traces of tachyons. There's been some ionization in the window glass, consistent with vast amounts of chronal energies being spent, and...you have no idea what I'm talking about, do you? Sorry. Sue always says I tend to get into the, um, 'techno-babble' when I get excited about something. Tell me, did you notice anything strange last night, at about," quick glance at instrument in one hand, "seven?"

It was her turn to blink in confusion. Wait, that last was a question, right? "Uh, yeah. Some thumping and bumps. But he's always making noise, I just thump the wall right back. I had no idea..."

"Oh, don't worry. Probably a good thing you didn't go look. I'm going to have to talk to some people about this, but I can say that it's quite possible that young Parker is...alive."

She let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. "Yeah?"

"Oh, yes. At least a twenty percent chance."

She must have looked horrified, because Mr Fantastic smiled at her, reassuringly. "Don't worry, miss. In my business, twenty percent is a _good_ thing."

…

Reed Richards stared at his scan readouts, frowning. This was not good. Not good at all. According to these scans, the readings detected were very similar to those used by Victor von Doom's time platform, only more elaborate, less haphazard. He knew for a fact that Victor had not improved his time machine since the invention of it (since von Doom never admitted any of his inventions might have flaws or need improving), but no-one else in this era had access to such technology.

Which was what concerned him.

No-one else. In _this_ era. And judging by the readings, what had been done in that small apartment would not have been an actual threat in _itself_, thus not triggering Peter's remarkable, nigh-psychic danger sense...

He activated the very secure link that always connected the various vehicles they flew, drove or helmed. "Sue? I think we have a bit of an odd situation on our hands..."

…

"He _what?_"

Reed shied away almost unconsciously from the over seven foot tall green woman who was currently looking quite irate. "Now, now, I said _might_. I have to analyze my findings a little more before I can give you a ninety percent assurance that this is what's happened, there are at least four other options that-"

"You're saying that my - that Peter is...what, _time_-napped? What the hell kind of messed up situation is _that?_ We had a _date!_"

Sue to the rescue. "Jen, calm down, this isn't helping. If this is indeed someone having taken him out of time, then we need to find him and bring him back. Time travel is very dangerous, and if the utmost care isn't taken he could end up lost in some other timeline forever. Hope to God he's stuck in one of the many futures and not in the past."

Ah. Good beginning, a little rough on the landing. Jen had started to calm down, but when the possibility of young Peter being lost somewhen in time forever was brought up...

"I think we're going to have to explore all avenues on this one. I don't have access to any kind of time machines, and the last time we tinkered with one...let's just say that Noh-Varr fellow is _very_ unhelpful. Not to mention that finding a single individual out of his own quantum place in the temporal flows is...difficult, to say the least."

Sue was looking pensive. "Reed...there's always-"

"_No_. I don't trust that sort of thing, and you shouldn't either. It's _unscientific_."

She was already shaking her head. "You know as well as I do that there's only one man we can talk to. Well...his successor, I suppose. We're going to-"

_Oh, _please_ don't use that ridiculous title..._

"-have to talk to the Sorcerer Supreme."

…

* * *

…

Jericho Drumm knelt down next to the hollow husk of what had once been a homeless man, trying not to let the flashing red and blue lights of the nearby police car distract him. Fortunately his attention deficit disorder-brother was annoying a nearby alley cat and thus not annoying _him_.

The body showed signs of some kind of psychic toxin, a numbing agent of sorts, something that held the soul in place as the Thing fed. And it had definitely fed. The corpse showed both psychic and corporeal signs of something large and insectoid having drained it of all bodily fluids, but there was no sign of actual high magic. Which meant a _primal_ spirit of some kind had broken into the physical plane. He stood up, resisting the urge to wipe his hands on the cloak. "Officer...Rigby, was it? Do you have any identification on the victim?"

"Well, usually we let the morgue and county handle the vagrants, but since the death was so...well, _weird_, we ran his prints, or what we could get of them. Turns out he had a record. Jake Furling, ran a big sweatshop a few years back until he was exposed in the Bugle. Did six months in white-collar prison, came out flat broke, never got back on his feet." The police officer frowned. "Say, how did you know there'd be a dead body here anyway?"

"I didn't. I came here to find what killed this man. It's probably stronger now, having fed." The current Sorcerer Supreme tried not to let his own words get to him. He felt out of his league, for certain. He hadn't held the title long, and already he had faced demons, sons of devils (arrogant little snots, all), powerful multi-dimensional invaders and worst of all that loon from Louisiana in the rooster outfit. Loas only knew why the man didn't seem to understand how ridiculous he looked.

An unfamiliar beeping caused him to look around for the source until he remembered that Danny had insisted he get a new cellphone. He idly wondered who would know the number already, and hoped it wasn't a sales person. "Uh...hello? Jericho Drumm speaking?"

_"Mr Drumm? I don't think we've met, but I'm calling on behalf of some mutual friends..."_

…

"You want me to-"

"Find a man who's been displaced in time, yes."

He stared at the two women in front of him. "You're joking."

The Storm woman frowned (or was it Richards? Never mind). "No, we're entirely serious. Dr Strange has done it many times before, and-"

Jericho sighed. "Look, I'm not _him_. We do our magic in entirely different ways, with different powers and very different rituals. Frankly, I never even _heard_ of something like this."

"Ooh, ooh, _I_ know, _I_ know-" His brother was hovering up and down behind them, waving his arms about.

"Shut up, Danny." He glanced at his presumptive clients, one of which was entirely too tall and..._female_. Both of which were looking a bit - bemused. "Uh, sorry. My dead brother is with us. Sort of my spirit _anti_-guide, always trying to get me lost."

"I love you too, _mon __frére_."

"Look, we wouldn't ask if it wasn't important. He's a very important person to this city, and-"

He interrupted them both. "Look, I said no, and I meant it. I don't know a way of doing what you are asking me to. It's not a matter of not _wanting_ to help, it's a question of being _unable_ to."

"_I_ know one."

He looked sharply at Daniel, who was looking very smug. "...say what?"

She-Hulk (now there was a suitable name) frowned. "...we didn't-"

"Not you. _Daniel_. What did _you_ say?"

Daniel leaned back in mid-air, smirking. "I said I know what could find him."

Jericho waited. "Well?"

"Well what?" That smirk...

"What's the spell?"

The spirit of Daniel Drumm grinned. "Well, that depends on what it's _worth_ to you..."

…

It took half an hour of haggling to wheedle the locator spell out of his brother (the end payment being the final season of Battlestar Galactica and some sort of statue of a female Japanese cartoon character...Daniel was getting altogether too weird in his post-mortem existence), but once he had it he was surprised he hadn't thought of it before. It was a basic finding spell with a few minor differences, was all. A few hundred dollars poorer and feeling decidedly bamboozled, he set to work.

…

There is a difference between traveling astrally and traveling on the astral plane. The former is relatively safe, if your body is safeguarded against inter-dimensional squatters or the likes because traveling astrally merely means traveling the known dimensions without your body. Whereas the latter is very much akin to being Donald Trump taking a pleasant stroll through gang territory late at night alone, while wearing a solid gold jacket and a big sign saying 'Rich White Man Here' on his back. If you don't know exactly what you're doing you'll either die horribly, or come back...different.

Fortunately, the locator spell didn't require the latter, only the former. Once it was spoken all you had to do was follow the ephemeral spirit trail through the ages, and hope the lost soul hadn't traveled forward instead of backward. If it was the former, the spell would fail due to the future being much too fluid to pin down.

He found the trail instantly.

It was an odd one, to be sure. Viewing the missing man's room in astral form showed things that could not be seen with mortal eyes, such as how the whole room was covered in spider webbing, or the way some possessions glowed strongly with emotion. He glanced at a photograph of a pretty young blonde in clothes many years out of style, and felt acutely affected by the waves of regret, shame and grief it radiated. Whoever this mystery man of theirs was (and he was almost sure they had mentioned his name repeatedly yet he could not seem to remember it for long...), he had invested a lot of his soul in that picture.

The trail itself was a faint silver strand similar to the thin silver thread that connected all souls to their corporeal selves. But in this case the strand seemingly faded out into thin air, suggesting it had been disconnected from this era. He took a deep metaphorical breath and began to follow it.

It didn't take long to see that the strand was moving backwards, not forwards. It ducked and weaved and interlaced itself throughout human history, never touching the physical plane for a moment. It occurred to him that this was due to the nature of scientific time travel, a more brute force approach to going from one place in time to another. Where magic allowed you to go to an exact moment, an exact second, the more mechanical way just sent you careening through the temporal oceans, much like fly-fishing. You aimed vaguely for the right time and hoped you aimed well enough.

But as he followed the lost soul backwards it became more and more difficult, more and more straining on his own astral self, until finally he had to yield and snap back into his own body and time. It was not a very pleasant sensation.

He gasped for air, feeling cold sweat on his face and torso, and tried desperately to forget the immense metaphysical agony his attempt had caused him. Finally he looked up at the two women and shook his head. "I...I found a trail, leading back through time. But the trail goes back too far, into a period where magics such as mine are simply not enough, because the era he is in, whenever it is, is so saturated with wild magic that searching it is impossible on your own. A circle of the thirteen greatest sorcerers on Earth and beyond would have trouble, and I am but one man. I can't help you."

The woman known mainly as She-Hulk (_"Call me Jen"_ she had said with a big, though somewhat forced smile) blinked. "Just how far back in time are we talking about?"

…

* * *

…

**Time Period And Place Unknown**

Peter Parker scratched his head, staring in shock and confusion at the jungle below. On the ground behind him were most of his bed, dresser and bedroom carpet (two dollars at a second-hand store). He was dressed only in his underwear, the blanket wrapped around his shoulders to protect from the angry sun above.

The rain forest spread out for miles and miles, no sign of letting up in his considerable viewing range, but way off in the distance he could make out the glittering band of a river and a gathering of tall towers and spires that suggested some sort of city. He shook his head, still a bit befuddled.

"Well I'll be a monkey's uncle...

…

* * *

…

_**To Be Continued...**_


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note: **Actually, yes, Jennifer _can_ change back and forth. During Civil War there was a brief period where she was locked as plain human Jennifer Walters (thanks to yet another out-of-character d*** move by one Anthony Stark), but she's been able to change back and forth at will for years now. It was even a plot point in an arc in her own comic a few years back, when she realized working out as Jennifer raised the strength of Jen by a factor of Whoa-Nelly.

Daniel wanted an anime figurine, actually. Like Jericho says, the man has gotten..._weird_ in his afterlife. Also, Kang is smart enough to send Peter back far enough that he won't be able to be a threat - a period that will be forgotten anyway...or so he thinks. Oh, and what Sue says below...no, Reed _is_ smarter. But have you ever met an old married couple who did not enjoy teasing one another?

Lines in "()" are in an unfamiliar language to the current viewpoint character. HTH, HAND!

…

* * *

...

**Ten Years Ago**

Doctor Stephen Strange, former residential on-call surgeon and all-round genius physician of Manhattan General fidgeted uneasily and frowned. How exactly was this supposed to help him with _anything?_ Lotus position he had mastered, if not very _comfortably_ so (something about having longer legs than the average Asian man), and meditation didn't feel nearly as alien now as it once did, but doing _both_ on a bed of _nails?_

_Ow._

Okay, the nails were blunt. Still hurt like a bastard.

_Right. Enough of this._ He opened one eyes and blinked. Mordo, the arrogant douche who kept insulting Stephen in Tibetan whenever he thought the Ancient One wasn't listening, was standing a few steps away, sneering.

"The master says for you to study in the Hall of Tablets."

Without waiting for a reply, Mordo walked off, his back stiff and his face cold. Probably infuriated for having to go give the dirty white man foreigner a simple message like a common servant. The man simply could not catch a clue. He got these jobs _because_ he found them demeaning, not because the master wanted to _demean_ him. The moment Mordo stopped complaining and found pleasure in the simple tasks he would be given different tasks. Much like himself, who had gone from building and dismantling brick walls to studying the chakras and basic warding spells, which he found far more frustrating than hauling bricks.

Stephen got up off the nails, wincing as he did. Right. The Hall of Tablets, to read a bunch of dull cuneiform warehouse reports or some Sanskrit sacred text yammering on and on and on about how some minor deity kicked the asses of a thousand demons, each demon getting a single verse and description...sure, he learned the ancient languages, but _egad_ was it dull.

Right, where was he...post-Atlantean clay tablet in a kind of crude hieroglyphic hybrid alphabet. And to think a few years ago he had been one of those who thought ancient Atlantis was a myth (unlike the rumored modern nation out in the Atlantic Ocean). But sure enough, Plato had been not only entirely _correct_, he'd been off by a few tens of thousands of years.

Okay...something about oceans, yada, yada, yada, great sorcerer...oh, hey, _this_ looked interesting! A great sorcerer, cheater of death, his powers beyond compare, _what's up Doc..._

He blinked.

Rubbed his eyes.

The last line of the tablet was written in clear English, quoting the very familiar cartoon rabbit of Stephen's childhood.

_What's up, Doc?_

He put the tablet down, carefully. There was a small insignia on it, an unfamiliar one. A circle with stylized webbing and a pair of large, tilted shapes. It sort of resembled a face, or a mask.

Finally, he made a decision. He picked the piece of ancient clay tablet up, cradling it gently in his arms, and went to seek out his master. Maybe the Ancient One would know...

…

* * *

…

**Today**

Storm and Walters were arguing quietly, or debating, and Jericho idly wondered if they should perhaps leave the premises. He felt a bit intrusive here. True, he had watched the apartment through his astral sight, but that was on business. Now he just felt much like he was rifling through the man's bathroom cupboards.

Naturally, Danny had done that first thing. He'd reported an overabundance of gauze and antiseptic and sterile wound patch packages. But according to Walters and the Latino woman who had given them all suspicious looks when they asked for the key earlier, this..Parker...was a photographer who often took pictures of superhuman battles.

_Ex_-photographer.

_Wasn't there something in the paper about that? Never mind._

"Are we done here, ladies?" They turned to glare but were interrupted when the doorbell rang.

Danny poked his head through (literally) the opposite door. "Wow. Literally saved by the bell, there. Did you know this woman actually owns a _thong?_ Really! I think this Parker has excellent taste in room mates."

Walters hesitated only briefly before cautiously opening the door, and to their surprise...a short, blithely smiling Asian man in green silks, holding a large brown box under one arm.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My master sent me with a delivery for you. Something he has held onto for _many_ years..."

…

Jennifer Walters looked down at the petrified clay tablet on the table. It had been broken, once, and glued together with exquisite care, but the message it held was very much familiar. That...well, she didn't know Peter's handwriting, but who else's could it be? Especially with the Spidey-insignia next to it. She smiled in spite of herself. Trust him to crack wise through over...

"...wait, _how_ long ago?"

"Oh, it is unknown. Somewhere between thirty and forty thousand years ago. Possibly less. After the first Atlantis, definitely. There is a second tablet, but it is not for your eyes, only those of my master and young master Drumm over there."

Doctor Voodoo looked surprised. "Me?"

"Certainly. You are the new Sorcerer Supreme. It is your duty to know these things. What I _can_ tell the lovely miss Walters right this moment, however, is that things must happen as they happened, or many things will not happen as they must happen."

She stared at him. "Come again?"

Wong smiled again, that infuriating little mysterious smirk. "I am saying that interfering now could be catastrophic for any number of timelines. Including this one. Trust your friend, miss Walters. He is most resourceful."

Something was bugging Susan. "Okay, I get that you don't want us to try and...rescue him, though we may have differing opinions on that, but just exactly _when_ is he?"

…

* * *

…

**Hyborian Era, Somewhere In Southern Zamora**

Peter Parker had felt very self-conscious as he walked down a dusty dirt road toward a city that felt taken straight out of a Thousand and One Nights. He was wearing a white t-shirt, a pair of worn cut-off jeans shorts and a pair of sneakers (the Spidey suit was in a his old gym bag at his side along with whatever he wanted to keep from the remains of what had been part of his bedroom), and so far nobody he had seen wore anything resembling modern clothing.

The local language sounded sort of like a cross between Russian and Arabic (and thank _you_ New York City for providing a man with the skill to recognize both languages by ear) though not exactly, and the most baffling thing was that most men carried weapons. Knives, everyone. A few had short, elaborately curved bows (oh, he knew this one from history, horse-bows, made to be used on horseback) and quivers, some wore chain shirts dangling to their knees, and most of those had long, curved swords at their hips or on their backs.

Yeah, definitely not in the New York area. Possibly he was in Jersey. No, wait, the swarthy guys looked naturally dark, no weird spray-on tans there. Better hair, too.

It was...like some sort of smelly, damp, suffocatingly hot version of the sets from the Lord of the Rings movies, only even more realistic and not as pretty. Right here by the city walls (granite painted with greasy-looking chalk paint) were crap-looking squat buildings rarely above two storeys tall, the occasional inn or tavern with a sign showing some elaborate picture (usually dragons or horses) and no words, which suggested most normal people here probably couldn't read.

His stomach growled, reminding him that it was at least (judging by his watch, at least) twelve hours since last he ate. Unfortunately he had no cash and very probably no local currency even if he _did_ have any money. He'd have to either beg or steal. _Or_...

…

The people of Vertanapol were used to traveling minstrels and jesters, especially on market day. Since the city was a thriving trader's outpost located on a road-nexus from which highways to such distant places as Stygia and the Black Kingdoms or more culturally familiar nations such as the Hyrkanian steppes or even Nordheim could be found, it was fairly difficult to impress the locals even if one had _exquisite_ skill.

...however, so far no jester had dangled upside down by _one toe_ from one of the poles used to haul foodstuffs to storage lofts, while at the same time juggling five colorful river-smooth rocks and singing a strange song (badly) in an unfamiliar language.

"_(...I'm Henry the eighth I am I am, I'm Henry the eighth I am...)" _

On the ground beneath him, a strange cloth hat consisting of a cap with a wide forward-aimed brim lay upside down. It didn't take long for the amused, gawking observers to start putting little coins in it, mostly coppers, but a few lone silver coins as well. After a while the jester changed his tune, while at the same time standing himself on the wall _itself_ as if the earth did not pull at him, bending at the knees so his torso aimed upwards while his calves were horizontal. And now it was _six_ colorful stones whirling in circles and figure-eights.

"(_...hello mudda...hello fadda...)"_

…

About half an hour later he wore clothes that were somewhat more suitable (though he had the shorts and shirt underneath the burnoose, just in case) for the area, and he was just about to decide which inn to go to when the flimsy window shutters to one especially disreputable-looking establishment shattered and a big, bulky man flew out, head first.

Huh. So, not _that_ place.

But then he heard an angry shout from inside that inn in a _very_ familiar voice in a _very_ familiar gobbledygook, and he finally realized where he was. Or rather, _when_.

"Oh, _no_..."

"(_If there's another man in this piss-hole of an inn who thinks he can grab my behind and get away with it, let him step forth now and I'll send him to the hells of Stygia in a heartbeat!)"_

He knew this voice. True, he had no idea what it was saying (it sounded really angry, though), but he did know who it belonged to. And every time he met _her_, bad things happened.

Blinking in shock, seeing her in the flesh for the first time (since the other two had been cases of possession)...

...she really _did_ look exactly like Mary-Jane. With muscles. And a tan.

In a chain-mail bikini.

Red Sonja turned around, a snarl on her stunning features. _"(You! What be you staring at, fool?)"_

He realized she was looking at _him_. "Oh, crap."

…

* * *

…

**Modern Era, New York**

"_Absolutely _not_. Sue, the man is an insufferable prig, a lecher, a complete ass and..."_

"And he's smarter than you."

The holographic image of Reed in lab clothes flickered slightly as he frowned at her. _"...I wouldn't say that. More familiar with advanced technology than I am, but definitely not smarter."_

Sue kept a smile down. "It's all right, Reed. He's not human, so you can still claim to be the smartest man on Earth..."

"_This is not about pride or vanity. I don't _trust_ him. He's Kree, and I never trust them when it comes to human affairs. Much as I wouldn't trust Victor to do what's best for America or Namor to do what's best for the surface-dwellers."_

Jen butted in. "Well, you did say it yourself, he's not _our_ kind of Kree. Alternate universe or something. Right?"

"_...yes. But not alternate enough. Remember that the Kree Empire he's from is one that has conquered not only their own universe, but several neighboring ones as well. To him, our universe is a province-to-be, and he was originally here to conquer the pEarth As far as I've been able to tell the only reason he helps us protect the planet is because of a patronizing Blue Man's Burden-complex."_

"But he _does_ help. _Doesn't_ he?" She loved it when she could use his own logic against him. He could be so blind to the empathy side of things, but use logic to quantify emotions and he crumbled like a deck of cards.

"_...fine. I'll send his current address to the Fantasticar's GPS. Just...just don't expect too much from him."_

"I can be very persuasive, Reed. And if that doesn't work, Jen can be moreso."

Jen grinned and cracked her knuckles.

…

"My, you're a big one." Noh-Varr of the Kree Omni-Empire looked appraisingly at Jennifer. "But green. Unappetizing color. Blue or pink is much more attractive in a humanoid. Now, you were saying something about a time machine? Because last time I tried helping the Avengers with that, it nearly ended badly for everyone. As I told them that when they first came knocking."

Jen blinked. Okay...while the man was handsome in a somewhat feral, untamed sort of way he was definitely not _friendly_. Or maybe this was his idea of polite. God, she hoped not. "...right. We're here because we're fairly sure a friend of ours is caught in the past. Way, way back in the past. Not the future. The past. And so far back that it doesn't really affect modern day. I think."

The Kree raised a perfect white eyebrow, a faint smirk on his lips. "Everything changes everything. It's one of the laws of interdimensional travel. Change the past, however little, and something changes in the present. Change the present, and the future changes. It's hardly a complicated concept, even for barely evolved apes. But if a modern day human is traipsing around in your past that could be _bad_, so I will help, in any way I am able. Can't be any worse than when that Stark person asked me. We'll see what I can do."

…

Stephen Strange stared at the book of spells. Back to basics. True, he had metaphorically gone from learning to crawl to learning to fly so many years ago. It had sort of been forced on him when Mordo betrayed the Ancient One and he had had to jump right ahead. Clea had always chided him on not doing the basics enough, and it seemed as if she had been correct.

He missed her, he really did. No-one could tell him he was being an ass better than she. Sometimes he wondered if the whole Illuminati affair could have been avoided if he had not driven her away in that Defenders mess, back to the Dark Dimensions.

The door opened, and Wong slipped in, silently as always. "Well?"

He could sense the disappointment of his mentor/apprentice that he had once again failed to be stealthy enough (some day he would have to teach him the simple warding that allowed you to sense individuals you knew long before they came near, just to see his reaction to the simplicity of it) to sneak up on him. "I gave them the tablet. I warned them explicitly against attempting to intervene."

Stephen nodded. "And?"

"Oh, they fully intend to intervene. Last I could hear with the eaves-dropping cantrip was that they were going to visit the Kree warrior."

"...Noh-Varr? Oh dear. He'll help, but I wonder if Jennifer can refrain from strangling him. he is..._abrasive_. But it's good to know that reverse psychology still works with some people." He glanced down at the second tablet, lying on the floor beside him. "After all, things must happen as they did, _when_ they did. Continue watching over them, then give them the second tablet at the proper moment."

Wong smiled, bowed, picked up the recently repaired clay tablet and vanished into a nearby shadow to carry out his task. Stephen waited for a few moments, then went back to the spell book. Right, where was he...ah yes, _Windle Poons Basic Aura Repellent_...

…

* * *

…

**Hyborian Era, The Drunken Warthog Inn, Zamora**

"_(And then, and then, and then, he has the nerve to call me a, a, a, a...where was I?)"_

Peter gave the red-haired woman leaning on him with a huge tankard of foul-smelling ale in her hand (the other slowly starting to meander around parts of him he did not entirely approve of) a deer-in-headlights look. God, he wished he knew the local language. Something, _anything_, a tourist parlance book, just so he could say 'yes', 'no', 'where are the restrooms' and 'please stop groping me, you smell like booze and badly roasted pork'.

"(_...right, he called me a...y'know, you're kind of pretty. Pretty, pretty, pretty.)"_

Oh no, now she was _smiling_ again. Smiling was usually followed by _leering_, and _groping_.

"(_Good teeth, too. A-)"_ she hiccuped, followed by a loud belch that would impress a college fraternity member, then continued. _"(-shame I can't, can't just, not supposed to unless...say, you any good at fi-high-high...fighting? 'Cause if you can beat me, I have a room upstairs...)"_

Right, there came the _leer_. He silently counted backwards from ten.

At three, a pair of long fingers pinched his left buttock. "Ow! Stop that!"

Red Sonja chortled, and tried unsuccessfully to plant a smelly wet one on him again. At the very last moment he managed to pull back. _"(Gobble gobble. Always the gobble gobble. Where you from, pretty one?)"_

Okay.

So.

She was hot.

But she _smelled_ like a brewery (and old _sweat_ and..._blood_, and _bad pork_...) and kept groping and pinching him, and generally being unpleasantly touchy-gropy. She kind of reminded him of Flash Thompson, to be honest.

She pressed herself closer, the lightly freckled cleavage barely contained by the bikini top made of little metal discs pushing up against him. _"(What do you say, we have a little duel, I 'lose', we break the bed? Or just have a go in the alley, I'm not picky-)"_

It was was at this point that four huge, armed and armored men burst into the inn from outside, looked around only briefly, and pointed right at the overbearing red-head. _"(There she is! Grab her!)"_

Peter smiled in earnest relief. "Oh, _thank_ you God!"

…

The ruler of Vertanapol and one day the world (as it once had been and as was proper) gazed out from his window on the city below.

Such a miserable little hovel of a village. He who had stood next to Atlantean kings, he who had ruled entire empires from the shadows, forced to eke out an existence here. But soon he would reclaim his rightful rule, soon the nations would...

"Yes?" The irritation in his voice wasn't entirely voluntary.

One of his guards, a brute of an alchemical hybrid much like all his foot soldiers, entered, his gaze cast downwards and fist on chest in salute. "Lord, we have located the red-haired warrior female. She was in an inn in the merchant quarters, quite drunken."

"Ah. She is in the dungeons?"

"...she will be, soon. I sent fifteen of our best to apprehend her."

"Excellent." The Hyrkanian woman would no longer be a hindrance to his designs. Time and again she had stopped him, her and that lumbering brute of a Cimmerian, but not this time. His scryings had told him that the Cimmerian was busy doing mercenary work in Aquilonia, and with luck the woman would be dead before the end of the lunar cycle. True, he was going to torture her a bit first, but one had to indulge in the little things every now and then.

He frowned.

Something felt off.

He waved away the guard and walked swiftly to his work desk. It was just an oaken table with his laboratory set up on it, but it was what he could afford and wield at this time, in this gods-forsaken place. Here he created potions, elixirs, amulets and unguents, here he worked his scrying bowl and foresaw what lay ahead, what threatened his path.

A spider had fallen into the scrying bowl.

The lord of Vertanapol frowned, and reached down with long, gnarled fingers brown with age and scarred with the many experiments they had undertaken. The scrying bowl was delicately enchanted, even the slightest change could render it useless until re-ensorcelled and this...insect...might be enough. It had already begun to hiss as the king's water in the bowl corroded its exoskeleton and the tiny hairs covering its body, but the acids would do nothing to fingers which could grasp burning hot metal without a flinch.

To his shock and dismay the little beast suddenly came to life, sank long fangs into his thumb and as he cursed and drew his hand away quickly the creature followed, only to fall to the floor.

He raised a foot to stamp it to mush, only to find himself staring at an empty floor. His thumb held no puncture wounds, and the insect could not have crawled away so quickly.

...a spider. A vile omen indeed. He had scryed his far future many a time, and every single time the same totem appeared across his fate, every single attempt to see a future in which he ruled...the shadow of a spider lay heavily across it.

It was not conclusive. Scryings were vague, notoriously so, unlike prophecies which were annoyingly clear in hindsight. But he was not prone to prophecy, as no god dared touch him with that gift. But no matter what it meant, the spider totem would cross his path many a times.

So. An omen, then.

Kulan Gath, last scion of Atlantis, snarled in cold distaste and threw the scrying bowl out the window.

…

Oh, everything had been going so _well_, at first. The big, ugly dudes in armor had yelled in that weird language at the red-head (um..._Sonja_, right? He remembered that much from the meetings they'd had. Would have. Time travel _sucked_. Right), she had been yelling right back, and for a moment there it had seemed like the town guard were gonna carry her off for public drunkenness.

Well, that was until one of them turned, stared at Peter and jabbed a big sword-bladed spear-thing at him.

He had smiled blankly back, refusing to rise to the bait. This, however, was the wrong response since the guard yelled again, angrier now, the tip of the blade grazing against Peter's newly purchased clothes. Still, Peter did nothing.

Which was when Sonja picked up a chair and brained the man.

Unlike in the movies, sturdy oak chairs did not break like balsa wood into tiny, cardboard-like splinters. No, they held up quite well to the _second_ guard who received it in his face, and the _third_ who got two chair-legs in the gut while the other two struck leather-kilt-covered thighs.

It wasn't until the _fourth_ guard rushed forward to stab either Peter or Sonja that the chair actually broke, much like the poor brute she used it on.

And then the other eleven guards rushed in.

At this point, diplomacy was not an option. So when the drunken warrior woman drew her sword and started laying into the nearest guards, Peter kicked the whole table into them, leapt high to avoid an ax that bisected the chair he'd sat on, then placing a hand on the head of the guard now trying to pull the weapon out of the floor in order to spread out and give a boot to the head to guards number whatever and umpteen, after which he flipped over both and put a knee in the armored chest of one more.

By the time he landed gracefully on his feet, only two guards remained, and none of them were looking at the drunken red-head who was currently picking a fight with a nearby load-bearing pillar. At some point she had knocked out her own opponent and had staggered along in the wrong direction.

He blinked at the remaining duo, then stood up, casually picking up one of the swords and easily bending it into the shape of a pretzel. He grinned at them.

The two stared, looked at each other, then ran out the door screaming.

He was feeling immensely self-satisfied right up until the point where Sonja placed one hand on his arm, one hand on his behind, and her chin on his shoulder, her breath reeking of bad ale and poor oral hygiene. _"(Well, well. Seems like the offer for a duel was unnecessary. Come on, pretty one, let's move on before more uglies arrive.)"_

Not for the first time he wished he could understand what she was saying.

…

* * *

…

**_To Be Continued..._**


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Notes:** Been without the Intarwebz for a while now (apparently ISPs take offense to someone not paying their bills in time). More is coming.

…

* * *

…

"_Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, _

_and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining _

_kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars - Nemedia, Ophir, _

_Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, _

_Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-_

_guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. _

_Hither came Peter, the New Yorker, brown-haired, sparkle-eyed, web-shooter on wrist, _

_a photographer, high-school teacher, a chemist, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, _

_to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his web-pattern-bootied feet."_

…

**Hyborian era. Somewhere in the jungles of southern Zamora**

Yeah, the barbarian lifestyle was _seriously_ overrated. Sleeping under the stars sounded great until you realized you had to share the wilderness with bugs, mosquitoes, damp, noises that called to mind horror movies from your youth, and the decidedly unpleasant concept of sleeping on the rocky, uncomfortable ground.

Add to this fending off occasional amorous advances from a not very hygienic-smelling woman who looked disconcertingly like a buffed up version of the old ex-girlfriend, and you had yourself a truly miserable week of wandering the country-side. The hot, humid, smelly, filthy country-side. If you closed your eyes you could almost picture yourself standing in the New York subway in mid-summer.

Peter Parker took a deep breath. Yep. Pee mixed with all kinds of perfumes, damp mildew, sweat, grease and metal (those last three would be the barbarian redhead)...pretty much a subway station in July.

"You have no idea where we're going, do you?"

Sonja looked at him, smirking.

"_Gobble gobble. It's a good thing you can't understand me, or you'd know how lost we are. Never been in this area before."_

He looked around. At least there was a path, of sorts. Looked more like a game trail, but there were little signs of locals that suggested otherwise. Unfortunately it was the skulls-on-sticks-with-feathers kind of 'Keep Out, Or Else'-type of signs of locals.

"_Now be quiet. These are Pictish lands."_

"Yeah, yeah, _Adrooshkie babooshka_ pixies to you too."

She gave him an odd look. _"Did you just say 'my knee is made of cheese' in Hyperborean? You _are_ a strange one."_

"Okay, Brain, but where are we gonna find ten gallons of Zima and Julie Andrews at this hour?"

"_I said, be quiet. Gods, I need a bath. We got chased out of town so quick I didn't have time to clean up..."_

"No, I prefer Moe to Larry. And nobody likes Curly."

There was a split second of warning as his spider-sense rang like the Notre Dame cathedral, and he had just enough time to push his wayward guide to the ground before over a dozen arrows struck the trees behind where they had stood. "Cripes! I don't think the locals appreciate us being here!"

"_Picts!_" Sonja drew her sword looking to try _fencing_ with the projectiles, but Peter was having none of it. He grabbed her by the waist, let fly a web-line and sent them in a nicely graceful arc above the treetops. She yelled and protested, but since he didn't understand a word of it anyway he just smiled blithely and ignored it.

"Ah, what a beautiful day for a web-slinging ride. The air is warm, the sun is shining, the natives are trying to kill us and - hey, _hey_, personal space! Hands off the caboose, _okay_?"

"_You are crazy, strange one! I think I like you!"_

…

* * *

…

**Modern Day. Tuesday. About Tea-time.**

Jennifer shuddered, and ceased staring at the device being constructed before her. Susan looked up from where she'd been tinkering with some gadget or other and gave her a look of concern. "Jen? You okay?"

She shook her head. "Fine. Just...felt like someone walked over my grave is all."

A smug face appeared from behind a very large cyclotron in the corner of the warehouse they were using. "Ah, a human saying. Denoting inexplicable sense of discomfort, often connected to innate sixth sense. Why you monkeys haven't done research into your latent psychic talents is beyond me. By the way, could you bring me that turbine? Yes, that one. I'd fetch it myself but _you_ seem to be more designed for physical labor."

She looked at him, picturing his head being slowly crushed between her fingers, then glanced at Sue. "Remind me why we need him again?"

"Because he's the only one willing to help us make a working time machine?"

"Oh, right. Damn."

"Lovely! Already threats of physical violence disguised as humor! This is _most_ educational." He beamed at them before vanishing behind the cyclotron again, barely missing a high-velocity spanner aimed at his head.

"Damn. Missed." Her heart wasn't into it, though. "What're you messing with there, Susie Q?"

Sue gave her a Look. "_God_, don't call me that. Johnny used to call me that all through high school. _So_ annoying. And this, my dear, is a bio-sensor. I grabbed one from a trashed Fantasticar and...well, I'm hooking it up to the...you don't care, do you?"

"Only sort of. The techno-babble I can do without, what it's for is another thing." She sat down by Susan, looking more closely at the device. "Hit me with the layman's terms."

"Well, we're going to have to _find_ him once we're there, right? Not like he carried full communications gear with him, so I took some DNA-samples from his comb and pretty much set this up to home in on his signature and nobody else's. According to these old history files I once, ah, _borrowed_ from Namor, the period we're going to was almost entirely humans with occasional Atlantean survivors from the Second Empire, so there should be very little alien DNA interfering with his biosigns."

"Why would _alien_ biosigns interfere with _his_?"

"Radiation. Most aliens, humanoid or otherwise, come from high-radiation environments that prompt the development of different skin pigmentation among other things. Some even grow brightly colored fur. Anyway, our mutual friend has a radiation-altered body chemistry, just like you and me, with raised levels of rads in his body fluids. Nothing immediately dangerous to other people, though blood transfusions might not be entirely safe. Since most aliens _also_ have that, well..."

"So basically it wouldn't work today, with all the non-terrestrials running around?" A mild headache was settling in, much like when the archive clerks at her old firm started talking about what they called 'continuity'.

"Well, it _would,_ but it would require a much bigger sensor and far more delicate programming. But I'm a biologist, not an engineer, so that's Reed's area, and he already made his opinion on this little venture known." Sue shrugged. "Anyway, it _should_ work, as long as we account for the Savage Land."

"...right."

…

* * *

…

**Back in the Hyborian Era, True Believers...**

There seemed to be an unending stream of what Sonja kept calling something sounding a lot like 'pixies', though he had so far seen no sign of wings or fairy dust on any of them. Just bad B.O. and horrible teeth. Not fun. Setting down anywhere constantly had them chased elsewhere within moments, and it was starting to occur to him that either they had spread out throughout the whole jungle in forces any mad power-hungry world conqueror would salivate over, or they knew how to teleport.

He kind of doubted the last one.

Adding to this was the growing suspicion that they were appearing in patterns meant to guide them somewhere. _Herding_ them.

"_Stranger, we cannot continue like this, they are herding us!"_

"You know, that's not a bad idea, but unfortunately the Spidey-mobile was trashed years ago. Also, I can't afford the gas. But anyway, I think they're herding us somewhere."

Setting down in a large, open clearing gave them time to think, or at least take a breather. He popped a few cricks out of his spine and checked his web fluid stores, finding them disconcertingly low. Meanwhile Sonja had her sword out and was inspecting the immediate area.

When she was downwind she didn't look so bad, actually.

Okay, the hair needed a wash and her teeth were slightly crooked (having no access to modern dentistry would do that, he supposed), but all in all...okay, part of it was her reminding him of MJ, the other part was her being a curvaceous, attractive woman with a deep tan wearing only a small chain bikini. So what was stopping him? Not like anyone would ever know, right?

But it didn't _feel_ right.

For one thing, he and Mary-Jane had (eventually) split up on reasonably friendly terms and had, as far as he was concerned, moved on with their lives. Second, he was finding himself wondering if Jennifer was worried about him, or even if his absence had been noted. Everything he knew about time travel (admittedly little) suggested that if he returned to the same exact moment he left, nobody would know. But that _did_ rather suppose he actually made it back somehow.

So what was stopping him?

Well...there had been a brief moment earlier, when flushed on adrenalin from escaping yet another ambush and there had been a very intense staring and panting at one another from exertion, but that had ended when he looked away after all of a sudden remembering the way Jen looked when waking up (_adorable_).

Which sort of scared him a bit.

He'd been loathe to commit seriously for most his life. The first girl he'd considered marrying was murdered by a psychotic madman, the second girl..._that_ mess was best left unattended, and lastly there was Mary-Jane, well, the mess was fairly mutual there. All the others had been brief flings stopped by one or the other or both having issues impossible to deal with. But in the case of his longer loves, well, in most cases it had been either whirlwind adrenalin-fueled craziness with Felicia, love-at-first-fight with Gwen or friendship turning into love with MJ.

Jennifer...or Jen, was sort of all three at once. He'd known her for years, casually, and they'd always gotten along like a house on fire, that is, not at _all_. They'd fought alongside one another many a times, though, always needling one another, usually ending with Jen threatening grievous bodily harm (one of the _other_ bikers of the Apocalypse).

And now he had actually had thoughts about Jen in the same category as MJ or Gwen.

Blinking, he realized that he was actually thinking of seeing her again, of simply vegging out on the couch and watching a movie with her while eating popcorn, or getting hot and heavy (and boy oh boy was that part _fun_), or arguing. Hoo Nelly did they know how to argue. Kind of started out like that, originally. Just like with...

He sighed. "Man, I wanna go _home_."

Which was when the Pixies attacked again. And this time he was too distracted and tired to put up a decent fight.

Or even make a Frank Black joke.

…

* * *

…

**Modern Day. Again. Several years after The Pixies broke up as a band.**

"Ah-hah!"

Three heads rose. Johnny had shown up at some point, and once he realized who they were gearing up to...rescue? He had jumped right in. In a massive fit of irony he was actually being quite helpful. His being a self-trained mechanic who happily tinkered with Reed's vehicles had given him a surprising amount of skill with advanced devices, even if he had no idea _how_ they worked or _why_ they worked. Now he was working busily on integrating Sue's biosign scanner into the sensor array of what appeared to be a formerly junked A.I.M. flying platform, the kind they'd ferry in their science troops with.

Only _this_ one was tricked out.

Why Noh-Varr had insisted on 'bling' (shiny hub caps? Cubic zirconium-studded gearshift? _Fuzzy dice?_) was a bit of a puzzler, as so many other things about the man. Jen suspected he was being sarcastic on a professional basis.

Johnny spoke first, his voice tired. "What?"

Noh-Varr appeared from the ceiling, dangling upside down in the upper bowels of his home-made 'time displacement device'. He waved something at them. "I _knew_ this was the problem. Shoddy components, much like everything else on this primitive mudball. Anyone have a grade 30 optical transfixer conduit?"

They stared at him.

"No?" He sighed. "Very well. I'll jury-rig something. But if this lands you all in the Cretaceous, it's _not_ my fault."

…

* * *

…

"Third one in three days." Detective Parnelli sipped his coffee, keeping a respectable distance from the crime scene while the CSI unit dusted for prints. They wouldn't find any. There hadn't been any at the other two sites either.

"Any idea what's doing it?"

He glanced at his partner. Corrigan had gotten a promotion to Superhuman Crime a few weeks ago, and learned fast, helping defuse drunken Hulks and catching speeding Big Wheels. "Nope. Though we got one of those mystical whatchamacallit guys on the first one, said it wasn't no disease or nothing. Said it was something escaping the, what was it, 'spirit world'. Haven't heard hide nor hair from the guy since. Anyway, some kinda bug spirit eating its way through the locals."

She frowned. "Awful specific in the targets, though. Could have gotten anyone, and yet it bypassed half the vagrants in the alley just to get to a hot dog vendor. Who was the first guy?"

He checked his notes. "One Jacob Furling, going by Jake. Big pillar-of-the-community fellow until he got busted in the papers for running sweatshops. Second one was Mary Kratsky, former getaway driver for one of those goofy small-time masked crews with knock-off rayguns. Served her time, was working as a cabbie."

She leaned down to peer at the surprisingly clean crime scene. "What the hell does a sweatshop owner turned bum, a bank robber turned cabbie and a hot dog vendor have in common?"

He sighed. "Not a clue. That's the problem."

High above, a shadow flitted across the sky. It laughed, softly.

…

* * *

…

**Hyborian o'clock.**

Peter Parker had had three _gigantic_ headaches in his life. The first one was after his first fight against the Sandman, who had used his head to do a very nice bongo rhythm that was sort of reminiscent of Uncle Ben's old Gene Krupa albums. The second was the one he got when he contracted pneumonia one snowy winter and Mysterio had tricked him into taking a bath in the East River. Or was it the Hudson? No matter. Third came from the days after they returned the world from time-twisted mutant paradise back to its regular sorry condition when Scarlet Witch went bananas. A whole day of reconciling two sets of memories had given him a migraine with not just a first name but a last name as well ('John Sumbitch', to be precise).

On the scale of one to twenty, this one only ranked a six and a half.

He opened his eyes. It was _not_ an improvement. The walls were stone and damp and lichen-covered, he was shackled upside down to some kind of x-shaped rack, and adding to the ambiance were braziers filled with red-hot coals, a few black candles, various torture implements and quite a lot of whips and hooks. Reminded him of one of MJ's photo shoots. To make matters worse, his webshooters had been removed and taken apart on a table, and he was feeling decidedly under the weather.

He coughed.

"Ow. _Never_ trust John Sumbitch."

"I _told_ you they were herding us. But _no_, it was all '_gobble gobble_' back."

"Yeah, well, I _kind_ of figured _that_ one out my_self_." He blinked. "Hey, I can understand you!"

He glanced over to his left where Sonja hung suspended much like he did. It was hard not to stare at how she was almost falling out of the metal bikini, so to speak, but the bruises and bloody cuts helped distract him. She was currently staring right back, brows raised in surprise. "So you can. And _I_ understand _you_."

"Great. We can insult one another without the language barrier getting in the way. I'm _so_ glad."

There was a pause. "I think I liked you better when I couldn't understand you."

He shrugged, wincing in pain when something stung his back. "Eh. Whatcha gonna do."

"_Excellent_. You are both awake. And I see the spell of tongues worked on you both. I find modern dialects so _primitive_, it is a blessing to be able to speak the language of my elders..."

The voice was like silk sliding over sandpaper.

"I must say, it is also pleasing to finally have the thorn in my side removed and at my disposal. However, I am _quite_ intrigued by your traveling _companion_. Going by the talismans he wore, he seems to be well versed in alchemy..."

Peter felt himself grow cold. He _knew_ that voice. He'd only technically met him twice, but Doctor Strange had once told him he had faced this man _three_ times, and _died_ during their second meeting. In another time. Or timeline. Dimension. Whatever.

"_Kulan Gath."_

The man who had silently entered the room was _tall_, at least six foot five, but the ridiculous hat added at _least_ another foot. The hats were always a dead giveaway. Well, the hats and the dark brown, leathery, wrinkled skin that looked like the man belonged in a certain classic Boris Karloff movie with old linen bandages covering every inch of him. The ancient sorcerer wore heavy green robes, and a familiar golden torc hung heavy around his neck. The cadaverous man known as Kulan Gath smiled genuinely at Peter, seemingly pleased. It was not a flattering look for the fellow, spoiled somewhat by the yellow eyes and skull-like visage.

"You _know_ of me? By sight, even. I find this gratifying. So few in this day and age have ever witnessed my true mien, or lived to remember it."

Peter blinked. Huh? This was _not_ the megalomaniacal magus that had turned several city blocks into a little hell on Earth, nor was it the nigh-omnipotent necromancer who, according to Doc Strange, had turned all of Manhattan into something more akin to Tolkien. This one was...well, still an ancient monstrous ghoul-thing in big silk robes and goofy hats, but... somehow less..._vicious_. Also, the weird reverb his voice always had was gone. Possibly this was because he was technically alive at this point and not possessing someone else's body. Hopefully less powerful, too.

"A shame that I require a sacrifice for tonight's ritual. I had already prepared it for my dear adversary here, but since the one requirement is a pure heart, yours shall do. And my dear Sonja shall be my concubine, as is right."

The redhead spat several words Peter was sure he hadn't heard right (the one about the goat and questionable parentage and sexual orientation all mixed together was..._disturbing_ in its implications). "I'll _die_ first!"

The sorcerer smirked. "No, no. _He_ will die first. _You_ will be the mother of my heirs."

For a moment, Peter actually did feel dismay, horror, a bit of sympathy (for Sonja, mainly)...

...but then he realized the bonds holding him were wrought iron. Not to mention that the rack they were bolted to was just wood.

Which meant...

"Oh. Oh me. Oh my. Help. Help. I am petrified with fear. And terror. Did I mention the fear? That. Oh, and eek. Aargh. Please don't kill me." All delivered in a morose monotone akin to seven-foot butlers in haunted mansions inhabited by mysterious, spooky, kooky and groovy families (the ones who were a screa-um in their house like a museum). Just to make sure the point was made he rattled his manacles a little, and affected a sardonically fake look of agony.

Gath frowned. "...and I see he is mad already. Just as well. The sacrifice only specifies a pure heart, not a pure soul or body."

He leaned down to caress Sonja's cheek, and she yanked her head away to avoid it. This elicited another amused smile from the cadaverous sorcerer, and then he was gone in a melodramatic swirl of robes that could teach Mysterio a thing or two about stylish exits. Peter counted down from when he stopped hearing the footsteps outside. At least twenty seconds was needed for the noise to not be heard...

Sonja was staring at him. "Are you _insane_? Aggravating him when we're _both_ in this-"

He smiled back, flexed, and felt the manacles drop off as the bolts keeping them locked snapped and careened off the walls like bullets. Then he stretched, and the remaining restraints were rendered useless as the oak rack broke in half.

The stare of disbelief turned into one of shock. Standing, he turned his head to the side. "Would you like to get out of here too, or do I leave you here to prepare the upcoming nuptials?"

He grinned at her.

…

* * *

…

**Modern day. Ten minutes after Noh-Varr finished three large pizzas all by himself.**

"_And_ we're done. It'll work two or three times, then it'll either implode in a quantum singularity that might erase the entire universe or it'll simply burn out and die. Depends on whether the temporal uncertainty compensator arrays burn out before the power supply. Pray it's the latter. So, who's up for going to the grand opening of the original Disneyland? We can dress up in Hydra uniforms and trick old Walt into thinking we're members of his cell. Eh? Eh?"

The combined glares from the other people in the room caused the Kree super soldier to falter. Jen shook her head, muttering. "I can't _believe_ I turned down Bruce's Hulk-strike-force-thing for _this_..."

Only Johnny had his priorities in order. "I call shotgun."

…

* * *

…

_**TBC**_


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: **Hey guys, sorry about the extremely long delay. Things have been hectic for a while, and I kind of lost the drive to write this particular story for a time (problem with an overactive imagination and itchy writing fingers). Blame Mass Effect and Dragon Age and above all Star Wars... As for explicit sex scenes, well..._no_. While this _is_ an adult story, and there _will_ be (and already are) mentions of sex in character dialog and thoughts, it's mainly an adventure/romance story, _not_ a smut-fic. Sorry. For that kind of stuff you'll have to brave that _other_ site and writers who aren't me. The M rating is mainly to make sure no-one can complain about raunchy dialogue. This _might_ change, but probably won't.

As for Noh-Varr's snarky self...he actually _was_ that arrogant and snarky in his first appearance in Morrison's Marvel Boy (and very, very funny). People (current Marvel writers) tend to forget that No-Varr is from an _alternate_ universe's Kree Empire, one that is much more powerful and pompous than the broken one in 616. Mar-Vell he ain't. Now, with no further ado, on with the show...

Any chemistry or physics mistakes I make are because I failed Science. Twice. (I fixed it in evening school later, but still...I'm an art-monkey, not an egghead!)

…

* * *

…

**Modern Day. Thunderbirds Are Go For Launch.**

It was a strange vehicle, for sure. Picture a standing platform, eight by eight feet, the top of which has had four seats affixed by crude welding, and the exposed high-tech underside covered in sturdy radiation-shielded armor glass. No, that's about it. Oh, apart from the hubcaps and fuzzy dice welded or tied to the rails that would ordinarily allow AIM personnel to maintain their balance in flight. Jen sighed as she looked at them. So childish. Immature.

_Usually, _I_ make the jokes. Dammit._

"So this thing will fly?"

Noh-Varr, standing upside down in the ceiling in a way that reminded her slightly of Peter, nodded. "Yes. Not _well_, mind you, but 'beggars can't be choosers'. I heard that one a week ago, on Jerry Springer. I _like_ Jerry Springer. He manipulates the human pack mentality for his own personal gain in a _most_ intriguing way. But more importantly, the platform will serve as a temporal displacement unit. Not spatial, only temporal. If it moved us in space as well, oh, I'd say we'd be in serious trouble. Might even cross the dimensional barriers. That never ends well. Any way, does everyone remember how this is going to work? Johnny, you're the least intelligent one in the room, mind telling us all if you have understood the concepts involved?"

Johnny, holding a duffel over one shoulder and a small device reminiscent of a pocket-computer in his other hand, gave the Kree a very unfriendly glare. "You're a douche, you know that? But yeah, I got it. Whatever time displacement thingy took Peter worked on different principles and probably dumped him somewhere far from modern North America, most likely an area that's part of Southern Europe today. Since this time platform will mainly move us through time, it won't move as such, and to avoid dying in the vacuum of space you're gonna have to account for passed time both there and here. Basically, we'll arrive _here_ roughly twelve days after he landed _there_."

"...doesn't this mean we'd technically be moving through space too, _unless_ we accounted for the Earth's movement while moving through time? Which would _also_ move us through space?"

Noh-Varr gave Jen an annoyed look. "Nobody likes a smart alec."

_Victory! I knew I took Physics 101 in college for a reason..._

"So what are we waiting for?"

…

Time travel.

It's really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really...

...really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really...

..._really_ complicated.

Paradoxes alone _aside_, when you're living in a pantheistically solipsist multiverse where every single incident, thought, dream and idea sprouts another universe with minor to massive differences and every single _possibility_ is a possible universe, traveling through time ain't exactly like dusting crops.

For one thing, get a single calculation wrong and instead of visiting your grandpa you find yourself staring into the fanged maws of dinosaurian Waffen-SS of the Fifth (not Fourth) Reich in a universe where intelligent dinosaurs from the Savage Land were converted to National socialism in the 1930's and conquered the known world. Or find yourself smothered in an infinity of smelly, rotting shrimp in a universe made entirely of such creatures.

We're not even gonna _mention_ the ones with zombies or Lovecraftian undying entities.

Fortunately for Jennifer and the others, Noh-Varr was an experienced cross-dimensional traveler and rarely if ever _made_ such mistakes.

_Un_fortunately for all of them, _they_ didn't have the genetic modifications necessary to travel painlessly through the space-time snowflakes (each and every one having 196,833 facets of which each facet is a multiverse with its own rules and laws of reality) that _he_ possessed.

Which is a very long-winded and mildly pretentious way of saying that Noh-Varr didn't warn them that unshielded time travel hurts like being repeatedly punched in your most sensitive areas by John Sumbitch's second cousin, Snake Gandhi.

...don't ask. Pantheistic solipsism, remember? Go ahead and look it up.

…

By the time they had stopped screaming, the time platform had stopped moving. If _moving_ was indeed the proper verb for what it did. Jennifer slowly pried her fingers loose from the railing, noting that she had turned a sizable portion of it into something resembling thin, wrinkled metal wiring. It had been solid molybdenum steel when she'd grabbed it.

Noh-Varr turned to them all and beamed cheerfully. "Well, _that_ wasn't so bad, _was_ it?"

She gave him a glare. Behind her she heard Johnny throwing up in some bushes, and Sue was looking decidedly dizzy, but all in all they were fine. "So, did we make it?"

"I have no clue. We'll have to run some scans, do a little dance, sacrifice a goat to the mad, bald Scotsman and possibly-"

Sue interrupted. "Just run a system scan and send a ping to the timekeepers in the Savage Land. They'll interpret it as just a routine check and tell us what time it is relative to the next visit by the Eternals, and since we...oh, that did _not_ sit well with my stomach...since we know the exact point in time the Eternals are coming by next between now and modern day, we can just-"

Jennifer tuned it out as Noh-Varr actually followed orders instantly without a hint of snark. Oh, right. Military. She glanced over at a green-looking Johnny, who was staring into the fern bushes where he'd been praising Ulik the troll repeatedly.

"..._carrots_? Why are there always _carrots_? I haven't even _eaten_ any carrots..."

Ignoring him _as well_ she turned to the bio-scanner. Sue had showed her how to use it before they left, and it was actually pretty easy. Certainly simpler to use than her latest iPhone. Now, all she had to do was exclude the antarctic landmass, and set it on-

"...never mind, you guys. He's here. About...if I'm reading this right, four hundred miles from here. Let's go."

The platform didn't move.

At all.

Three pairs of eyes turned to Noh-Varr, who shrugged with a faintly embarrassed look on his face. "Ah...no clue. I'll have to check the turbines."

"We're stuck?"

"No, no, not _stuck_, just temporarily without a means of mobility, just let me check the..._huh_. Well, _that's_ not supposed to be...oh. Ah, _mips_."

Sue sighed. "We're stuck."

…

* * *

…

_**Four hundred miles south...**_

"They're breaking through the outer doors! What are you _doing_ in there?"

Peter ignored the increasingly upset redhead. Okay, these were _primitive_ tools, but they'd been enough to pull his webshooters _apart_, so they _should_ be enough to..._there_. And _that_, and the final screw...

"Out of the way, red!" He didn't wait for her to move before he raised his arm and aimed. Sonja managed to duck the very split second before a huge glob of webbing struck the door, and he lowered the half-finished webshooter. "That'll hold them for an hour, or until Gath can get his hands on something more powerful. You said he doesn't do any major spells?"

She shook her head. "Mostly alchemy, but he is skilled enough in that. Apparently whatever spell he had intended tonight was meant to grant him the power he held in his youth."

He smirked. "I seriously doubt he was ever _young_. Can you picture him in baby clothing?"

Sonja stared at him, her eyes widening in horrified amusement. "Oh, gods, that's just _wrong_!"

Grinning, he turned back to his disassembled gear. "_Excellent_. My work here is now complete. I shall mess with the heads of _every_ single hero of the ages!"

"You're _strange_, you know that, don't you?"

He just mm-hmmed in reply. Okay, those springs went _there_, and the canister clips in _that_, tighten that screw, bend the trigger back into shape... "Damned amateur. Did he _have_ to try and break them? I'm gonna have to fine tune them again when I get home..."

_If I get home. I have to find a way of telling everyone where I am..._

How do you send a message across thousands upon thousands of years? And expect it to last in any way? Let's see...parchment wouldn't last more than three or so millennia without starting to get illegible. Stone? Would take a lot of time. Clay tablets...now _there_ was an idea. Who here would have clay tablets? A scribe. What kind of tablets would be kept around? Religious texts, or...accounting. Everyone kept records of money. Sometimes two sets, to keep the tax collectors off your back.

"Done. Now, you mentioned he's an alchemist? That means he has a laboratory somewhere around the castle..." He grinned as he strapped on the webshooters on his arms. "Time for us to stop being _re_active and start being _pro_active..."

…

Sonja only made token complaints as he grabbed her around the waist and crawled out the formerly barred window. He tried to once again ignore the fact he was holding a half-naked woman in one arm and focused on finding the lab, though it was kind of difficult considering she was holding on in a very _intimate_ fashion. The woman was seemingly infinitely fascinated with his gluteus maximus.

Let's see, Gath would need somewhere with plenty of ventilation, somewhere he could quickly dispose of experiments gone wrong, and somewhere isolated. Not near the ground. The towers. A tower with chemical stains on the side.

_There_.

"Hold on, red!" She let out a squeal of delight as he leaped from the side of the wall he'd been moving on the side of, a jump of at least thirty feet up onto the slick side of one of the towers. Careful not to touch the waxy-looking green and blue stains on the wall lest he slip off (chemicals messing with the sticky-feet _had_ happened before), he quickly made his way up to the window and slipped inside, setting her down.

She brushed an errant curl of crimson hair out of her face and beamed at him. "That was fun! _Again_!"

_Adrenalin junkie. Figures._

He shook his head and started rummaging through what turned out to be a surprisingly complete collection of chemicals, metals and fun by the cartloads. He started to smile.

Then grin.

Finally, he chortled, rubbing his hands together with glee. "Oh, _boy_...he thinks he knows chemistry? _I'll_ show him _chemistry_..."

…

The hybrids who served as Kulan Gath's elite guard were created by alchemically and magically _forcing_ animal traits onto big, dumb brutes skilled at one thing and one thing only: hurting people. It was a technique that had been fairly common in the heyday of Atlantis to manufacture foot soldiers from the common, low-born barely human stock, and one that he could successfully reproduce in this primitive era...but that didn't mean they were as efficient as actual high-caste Atlantean warriors had been. Heightened senses and increased strength did not make up for low intelligence.

"Out of the way, _fools_!" A carefully prepared vial of acid was thrown hard at the door, quickly eating through wood and metal and a foot of stone below it, as well as the strange web-like substance that had so frustrated his guards. They rushed in, roaring, and...

"Great Lord, they are not here!" One of his hybrids poked its head out through the doorway and snarled the words through broken, jagged teeth.

"_What_?" He pushed the nearest guards aside and peered inside the dungeon. _Nothing_. One of the racks was torn to pieces, the chains that had held them both broken...apparently the man had been far stronger than he _appeared_. No matter. Brute strength could never avail against the superior mind of an Atlantean.

Then he noticed the thick iron bars on the small window had been torn out, removing a large portion of the masonry they had been attached to. They were _loose_!

"Gather as many of my elite guard as you can! Search the castle and the nearby premises, they can't have gotten too far yet, and remember that I want them alive!" He glared at the guards, still staring dumbly at him. "_Now_!"

…

"What are you _doing_? Why are you gathering up...is that _soap_?"

Peter grinned at Red. "Not _quite_. This is what Kulan Gath throws out after he _makes_ soap. Funny, he smells horrible for such a cleanly guy. Anyway, this...is _glycerol_. And with this, I can make something _very_ funny."

She gave him a suspicious glare. "Funny how?"

"Funny boom. _Big_ boom. Keep an eye on that while I mix the acids."

"Acids?"

"Oh, don't worry, I'm a _scientist_! I've done this...well, once. In a lab. Which was better and safer than _this_ one. But hey, if an Italian guy could do this in the 1800's with _their_ facilities, I _should_ be able to do it _here_. Oh, and, if you could open his ice box? Thanks. We need a _lot_ of ice water for this."

"...are you sure you know what you're doing? He must be searching for us even at this very moment!"

He shrugged. "Hey, he'll never think of looking in his own lab. In fact, I think they'll assume we escaped the castle altogether."

"...so what's this thing you're making called?"

The smile he presented did not appease her. "Nitroglycerin!"

…

"...this is boring."

"You've said that. Now be quiet, this is delicate work."

"...I want to bash their _heads_ in, not watch you tinker with his potions!"

"Shush! By the way, why is Kulan Gath ruling _this_ area, I thought you said he was an Atlantean _relic_, not a local-"

"He's a sorcerer. They tend to live for a very long time. About a year ago he usurped the throne from the local duke, started a reign of terror, the usual. It's why I'm here. Well, I'm being paid a vast amount of _gold_ to be here. I did _not_ expect his guards to notice me so soon _or_ to run into someone as odd as _you_."

"Heh. Old Parker-luck strikes again..."

"What?"

"Nothing. Mind handing me those tongs? Yeah, those. Thanks. So what happened with the duke? Dead?"

She shook her head. "No, just vanished. Gath likes to _torment_ people, so he's probably still something akin to alive and wishing he wasn't. Why?"

He shrugged, carefully apportioning solutions and watching over the cooling process, using his spider-sense to warn him about anything getting too volatile. "Oh, just thinking that if we manage to get you your paycheck, this place could use someone in charge that isn't, you know, a bad person." Pausing to gather up a strange, oily, clear liquid in one of the vials he turned to give her a look. "...the duke _wasn't_ a bad person, was he?"

"No worse than most lords. In his defense, the torture chamber Gath was keeping us in was used for storage during the duke's reign, so at least _he_ wasn't using it. That could simply mean he preferred to have anyone he convicted executed instantly instead, though."

He snorted. "So cheerful, you are. Reminds me of a blind lawyer I know."

"...I have no idea what a 'laahyah' is. Or a 'peichik', for that matter."

"It's the accent, I know. Us Queens-residents have trouble communicating with people in our _own_ borough, let alone other places or time periods. Now stand back, I need to test this."

"Test? What do you me-"

**BAM!**

"Whoa! A little too big a drop, that. But it'll do!" He grinned cheerfully at her stunned expression. "Told you it makes big booms. That was just a tiny _drop_, too..."

…

* * *

…

**412 Miles To The North.**

"Remind me again why this was a good idea?"

Jen smirked, holding the thing that was a cross between a T-Rex and one of those Australian lizards with a collar in a firm headlock. "I never said it was a _good_ idea, just that this was the only shot we had at getting P...Spidey back home. Behind you."

Johnny only just managed to dodge what looked like some sort of arboreal Velociraptor trying to leap on top his back from above. "Get off, clawfingers!" A quick burst of flame sent it yelping in pain, and he kept the hand burning just in case. "You gonna keep that one?"

She shrugged. "I dunno. He's kinda cute. But I doubt I could afford feeding it, and if he ate a mailman or two it'd be _such_ a pain with the lawsuits and all. Hang on, I'm gonna tell him to stop being frisky."

She shifted her grip, bunched up the fist that was now free, and then punched the thing solidly on the nose hard enough to make it roar each time. Each punch emphasized the scolding she was giving it. "_You_ - do _not_ - get to _eat_ - my _clothes_! _Bad_ dino!"

With that she let it go. The creature glared at them, tilting the head this way and that for a proper look, then decided they weren't worth the trouble and lumbered off.

A slow, sarcastic clap rose above the noise of the jungle.

"You could have _helped_, Noh-Varr."

The Kree interdimensional traveler had a disgustingly smug and condescending look on his face. "Why? You were dealing with the beasts quite efficiently. Though none of the human books on this era suggested there were dinosaur remnants around. Poor research, truly. Actually, I'm just here to tell you that we have restored flight capacity. _Slow_ flight, but flight nonetheless. Unless you want to stay and work out more of your primate aggressions on the wildlife?"

"I can always work them out on you if you like?" She gave him an innocent smile.

"Yes, yes, you're very scary. Now let's leave."

…

* * *

…

**The Villainous Villain's Villainous Lair (which is villainous).**

"Master! Master! We _found_ them, master!"

Kulan Gath sighed with relief. "You did? Where?"

"The east tower, master!"

The corpse-like Atlantean paled, which was no mean feat for someone who looked like a prune. "...the..._east_...tower?"

"Yes, master! We heard noises from within!"

_My laboratory!_

"Quickly, gather as many men as you can! I no longer care if the male lives, just make certain the Hyrkanian does!"

…

"..._now_ what are you doing?"

Peter grinned. "Ever played Jenga? No, sorry, silly question. Hand me those. Yeah, those. Know what happens when you mix certain substances? The reactions can be both explosive and...amusing. Wait and see. Now, the knapsack with the vials. Careful!"

He'd wrapped them thickly in gauze, but even with that they would be highly volatile. Given enough time and effort, he could probably make something less hazardous to handle, but that would ruin the intention of this batch. He _wanted_ it volatile. Once he had webbed the knapsack securely to his back, he turned back to the window, aimed carefully and let a web-line fly. Sonja's face lit up.

"Are we going swinging again?"

"Not yet." He fastened the still-sticky line to the window-sill, then carefully aimed a couple more lines inside the room. "There. Now we wait."

"For what?"

There was a heavy thump on the door. "That."

…

Sonja stared at the odd foreigner as he told her to stand on the window sill, He soon joined her there, after arranging the glassware and things in the alchemical laboratory even more precariously. She felt her face flush a little as he wrapped his free arm around her, holding onto the web-like line leading to the opposing tower with his other. "What _are_ you up to?"

He grinned at her. "Know what's worse than someone messing up your laboratory?"

She frowned. "No?"

The grin became wider, and she found herself wanting to kiss him. "When you mess up your _own_ lab."

There was another thump on the door, and he yelled out in an exaggeratedly frightened voice. "Oh, _no_! I hope they can't break down the door before we're _done_ in here, that would be _disastrous_ for us!"

Three things happened. He leaped out the window, Sonja in his arms, then Kulan Gath's over-excited troops smashed the door in, which in turn caused the carefully rigged hyper-thin web-lines to pull on the surfaces they had been attached to, which in turn made the precariously, delicately balanced laboratory apparatuses crash to the floor. Glass and earthenware pots shattered, dozens of volatile chemicals and concoctions mixed together, some of it dangerously, some of it...amusingly.

The wizened sorcerer had time to pale and begin turning around by the time the potassium and sodium struck water.

There was a solid, bone-shaking _**WHUMP**_, followed by a shockwave, mortar and stone and roof tiles careening wildly, shrieks of half-men running desperately to save themselves and the infuriated, angered howl of sheer outrage of the Atlantean sorcerer whose laboratory was just repeatedly set to exploding into smithereens.

…

He had to admit, soaring through the air on a thin web-line with a hot chain-mail bikinied red-head in your arms while something exploded behind him made him feel vaguely like he was in a Michael Bay movie. Better lines and plot, though.

Sonja was laughing, which was both a bit intriguing and very, very disturbing in more ways than one. As he let loose another web-line, remembering that he was going to be unable to produce more of it in these conditions, he took the opportunity to ask. "What direction is the city? I think I have another idea..."

She grinned madly, red-faced with excitement. "I can't wait! It's _that_ way!"

…

* * *

…

**Somewhere above the Hyrkanian Steppes.**

"Are we there yet?"

Noh-Varr glared at Jen, who was beaming at him in perfect harmony with Johnny Storm. "_No_. Just like the _last_ twenty-eight times you asked that very same question."

"Gee, he's cranky. You think he's cranky, Johnny?"

"He's a sour-puss. Maybe he needs a Hostess fruit pie?"

"Oh, yes, with the crisp crust and rich fruity filling and the-"

"_That's_ the one! Even _Galactus_ can't resist Hostess fruit pies."

Noh-Varr's glare turned confused, then he shook his head and turned to the eldest member of the impromptu rescue force. "Susan, they're _mocking_ me. What do I do?"

She gave him a serious look, pursed her lips, then nodded. "_I_ could go for a Hostess fruit pie right now..."

The frustrated shriek of Kree origin was joined by three people laughing evilly. Revenge was sweet as a fruit pie.

…

* * *

…

_To Be Continued..._


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N:** Hostess fruit pies...the only choice.

…

* * *

…

**The Hyborian Era, roughly 138 miles from Vertanapol.**

"So I notice you've been very quiet for someone who usually never pauses to let her brain run her mouth."

Jen turned to Sue, about to say something scathing, but stopped.

"See? Exactly my point. And I notice you've barely mentioned him since we got this little Frightful Four together."

She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, then turned away to watch the scenery. It certainly was _pretty_, at least as seen from above. The occasional city seen from a distance, tall spires and alabaster domes and golden cupolas, or fortresses, or mountain ranges, and she _hated_ all of it. "Haven't really had much to say. We're going there, we'll get him home, that's that. Just a standard rescue mission."

Sue leaned in. "_Not_ a standard rescue mission, Jen. You usually don't go all close-lipped when we go to rescue Reed or any of the Avengers. Last time you were like this..."

She frowned back. "What? Oh, don't compare this to _Wyatt_. That was - that was _ages_ ago."

"He never _did_ like being the rescued one, did he? Is that what you're nervous about?"

"No!" Jen flinched as Noh-Varr and Johnny glanced back at them, and lowered her voice. "No. Not really."

Sue just kept looking at her. God, she was such a _mom_ sometimes.

"...okay, maybe a little bit. And I've been trying _not_ to think about Peter for a while, because I _still_ don't know exactly what this thing with us _is_, or if there _is_ an us or thing or whatever." She tied some former railing into a knot, then scrunched it into a stick figure. "_I_ dunno. I'm...just trying not to _jinx_ things. I tend to do that. I rush ahead, heart on my sleeve, and _bam_, it's mind control or the guy has his masculinity threatened by a girl who can juggle tanks, or it's some _other_ weird thing that makes it all turn pie-shaped before the week is done."

Sue smiled at her warmly. "Jen, that's what makes you, _you_. Both of you. I remember when I first met regular you, you wouldn't say spit before you knew nobody hated you, and then you'd get upset and all of a sudden you were seven feet tall with a chip on your shoulder the size of Nebraska."

"I'm actually just six foot seven."

"What?"

Jen grinned. "I'm usually not seven feet tall when I hulk out. Everyone _thinks_ I am because I kind of cheated with five inch heels the first time someone got my actual measurements. Also, the hair was _huge_ back then. Straight perms were a godsend."

Sue frowned, not knowing exactly how to take that sudden confession. "Um, _okay_..."

"No, really. I've gone up and down in height over the years, but on average, six seven. Taller when I get pissed. It's a whole gamma thing. Bruce has the same problem. Did you know one of his shapes was only about five three? Ugly little guy, too. Mouth on him like Andrew Dice Clay."

Sue laughed. "Sweetie, you're giving away your age with your references."

The look of mock hurt on Jen's face was picture perfect. "What? I _loved_ Brain Smasher, A Love Story!"

"God, that's even _worse_. And you're dodging the issue. I'm telling you that old Jen, _either_ version of her, is not _new_ Jen, and to not worry so much. You'll know what to do when it comes to it. Like always."

Jen mustered a smile, but it was a fairly brittle one. Treacherous thoughts rushed around chasing each other in the playground of her mind. One was foremost.

_That's what I'm afraid of._

…

* * *

…

**Vertanapol, Zamora.**

"Are you _mad_, woman? We did not pay you draw the wizard to _us_, we paid you to _slay_ him!"

Sonja pinched the bridge of her nose and wished there was no rule saying you shouldn't kill your employers. "Look, Orlov-"

"Murov."

"Whatever. You hired me to kill, and I quote, the 'foul old wizard living in the duke's palace', not _Kulan Gath_, the timeless monstrosity who has vexed good men and women for _centuries_, if not millennia. I'm not saying I won't give it a good _try_, but I am expecting higher pay if I succeed. Either that or _you_ help. Now listen to my friend here, he has a plan."

The rotund merchant looked confused. "...the market jester? Why would we listen to a _juggler_?"

She turned to Peter and raised an eyebrow. "Juggler?"

He shrugged. "I had no money and didn't know the language. We all have to _eat_."

"Interesting. Now, Dernov-"

"_Murov_!"

"Yes, yes, in any case, my friend here can bend steel with his bare hands, leap ten times higher than anyone I have ever seen, and broke me out of Gath's personal dungeons using skills matching the sorcerer _himself_, so I suggest you and the other merchant's guilders _listen_ to him, because the sorcerer will likely be here within the hour." She crossed her arms and waited.

After a short while, the merchant nodded. "Fine."

Yielding the floor to Peter, he stepped up on the nearby table in order to be heard. "All right, I need several barrels of flammable oil, enough to set half the town in flames. Also, ropes, a few strong men to help me place them, and some brave souls who aren't afraid to stand up for his home. Anyone?"

She leaned against the wall, admiring his behind while he stood there explaining his plan. Like two angry cats in a bag. For some reason he had gone for a red and blue plain sack-cloth shirt this time, most of his old clothes having been taken from them in Gath's dungeons, and had used thick black paint to make an insignia in the shape of a spider on the back of it. But the trousers were still tight and allowed her quite the view from the rear.

It was quite _spectacular_, really.

…

Evening was coming on by the time Kulan Gath's forces marched into Vertanapol, emerging from the nearby forest road with murder in mind. At least a tenth was too badly injured to come along, and Gath had overseen their execution in person, as a reminder to the rest of what failure meant. They were no great thinkers, but they understood fear.

He should have killed the male on sight. But he had been greedy, he had assumed the wench would not be followed by someone equal to or surpassing her prowess, and so he had changed his plans, to use the stranger in the ritual and to take the woman for himself. Now he held neither, but at least he knew where they were. His lackeys among the Picts in the forests had made certain they were not there, which left only one place within a day's travels.

In truth, Vertanapol was merely a stepping stone. A backwater duchy where he could build a power base, a place from where he could strike for the Zamoran capitol and outlying provinces, and from there to Aquilonia, Hyrkania, Stygia, and oh how sweet _that_ would be, to watch those fools with their half-witted attempts at understanding the greater mysteries of the universe finally fall before him...especially that feeble-mind Thoth-Amon. 'Not skilled enough' indeed. Punishing _him_ would be _most_ satisfying.

But every journey began with a single step. _This_ was that step.

He'd prepared. The Hyrkanian wench was crafty and skilled as a warrior, even _he_ had heard stories of her, though perhaps not as many as the tales of that Cimmerian oaf currently plaguing the southern seas with some impractically naked pirate queen at his side.

But the stranger who had broken the two out of his grasp and had devastated his laboratory, which he would surely pay for over _years_ of prolonged torture, _that_ man was a mystery. Strong, quick, far too clever by half. The man had done _unexpected_ things with the laboratory, he truly had. Something with the soap that Gath sold to nobles for dearly needed gold.

Why would anyone need _soap_ for anything besides cleaning oneself? It wasn't even as if anyone in this time knew how to _make_ it, _he_ only knew because it had been part of his alchemist's training as a boy countless centuries ago in a more civilized age.

But knowing now what he hadn't then, he had been forced to go into the deepest cellars to fetch potions and unguents that he had kept hidden away for a rainy day. The unguents had limbered his ancient bones, given him _some_ semblance of the spryness of youth, and the potions...ah, but that was to come. He would savor this moment. A first victory to pave the way for his dominion of all these nations. And the stranger with his blasted meddling would suffer such agonies as he had rarely bestowed upon _anyone_ before.

Slow skinning, first. Yes, that would be _quite_ satisfactory. Little strips of skin peeled away, slowly, salt poured and rubbed into the bleeding wounds. Salt was expensive here so far from the ocean, but it would be worth it. Then, perhaps, amputations. Yes. One finger joint at a time. Letting them heal before taking the next. And the next.

He smiled to himself, and one of the half-men marching beside him shied away, its bestial face screwed up in a horrified grimace.

…

Someone stood waiting for them in the middle of the street. The half-man soldiers lumbered to a stop, glancing uncertainly at each other, then their master.

The lone man smiled, and Gath recognized him. The stranger. Short, wavy brown hair, that _insufferable_ smirk, dressed in odd, skin-tight hose of unfamiliar design, and now also a coarse red and blue sack-cloth shirt with a spider painted...on...it.

_A spider._

He raised his hand imperiously, trying to keep a sudden tremor of uncertainty (not fear, _never_ fear) from showing. "Take him."

…

From her hiding place on a roof top, Sonja watched the events unfurl below. 'Peetur', and what a strange name _that_ was, stood calmly waiting for the sorcerer and his horde of man-beasts as if he'd invited them for drinks and entertainment.

She could hear their voices echo up from below, and couldn't help smiling.

"Take him."

"Not even a _dinner_ first? Flowers? Jewelry? Diamonds are a spider's best friend you know! Whoop, sorry, _my_ bad, didn't know that wall was so _solid_. Oh, no, I'm so _terribly_ sorry, didn't mean to grab you by the feet and- whoa, _whoa_, getting a bit _personal_ there! Am I trying to stab any of you? No? Then why d'you all have to go and pull swords? Is _that_ any way to treat your friendly neighborhood spider-man?"

The man was single-handedly holding off a full dozen of the beast-men, but she knew it couldn't last. Not when Gath had hundreds of them with him. Even so, it was quite amusing to watch him leap off their heads and sending them into nearby walls, grabbing one by the feet to use as an improvised flail, throwing them about like rag dolls. Strong though they were, they were no match for _his_ strength. Or speed.

But just as Peetur seemed to be wearing down, he suddenly turned and fled down the street, followed closely by the half-men, roaring at their immanent victory. Gath followed.

She smiled. "All right, boys, the moment he's around the corner."

…

The small square was devoid of people, or even torches. Gath frowned. Something was _off_ about all of this. Where were the _people_ of the city, what was...wait, wasn't this area mostly _abandoned_, given up by the populace and held by beggars and thieves? Where were _they_?

A hiss in the air made him look up, and his eyes, reinvigorated and sharp, caught the trails of a multitude of arrows with their tips covered in rags and set to fire. But they were far too high in the air to be aimed at his men, so what-

The first arrows struck into the open, broken windows behind him and with a massive roar the entire house exploded, sending cascades of burning oil into the street behind them. Hidden, oil-soaked sheets of sailcloth beneath the dirt streets caught fire as well, a wall of fire erupting behind them.

Half-men were many things, strong, resilient, brave to the point of stupidity, but even they shrieked in fear as more fire and explosions tore apart entire buildings, trapping Gath and the soldiers in an increasingly blazing inferno.

Kulan Gath smiled. So, the fool thought to trap him? Well, he would find that his wolf trap had caught a dragon.

The potion tasted vile, burning his throat as it went down into his belly. Within seconds, he felt the changes start to take him. Blood of a greater wyrm of Vanaheim, gall of a Stygian tomb crawler, spit of a summoned elder demon, all prepared and boiled in a fire using Kothian sulfur. He would pay for this later in pain and withered limbs, but it would be well worth it.

Tossing the vial aside, he stepped forth and waited.

…

"What's he _waiting_ for?"

Sonja glanced at Morlov or whatever his name was and frowned. "I don't know."

He opened his mouth to ask something else, but as he did a dark red and blue blur soared past them on a thin line of glittering silk.

…

His first punch landed like a freight train with the full momentum and speed at his disposal. Peter felt something _crack_ in his face even as the world flickered into blackness and light and the world spun all around him, and then he struck the nearby wall hard enough to knock a few decades of whitewash off in a cloud of white dust. He let out a braying groan as the air left his lungs explosively, and slid down the wall to the ground.

He shook the stars out of his head and winced at the stab of pain this caused. "Owww..."

Where the _hell_ did the old man get that _punch_ from? He hadn't gotten hit like that since...since _Morlun_. The times he remembered vaguely meeting Gath before the sorcerer had been frail, depending on his magic to deal out pain, but this...was kind of unprecedented.

Long, bony fingers grabbed his hair and lifted him to his feet, and then that hideous face was mere inches away, cadaverous breath and strange, dark, golden reptile's eyes staring at him. "Why do you wear the emblem of the spider?"

_Oh, man, don't hand me lines like that..._

"...because they were all out of shirts with monarch butterflies..."

There was a brief sense of intense pain in his scalp and then weightlessness followed by the impact of the wall. "I asked a question. Answer me and your death may be shortened."

"Promise? Because your breath _alone_ is fatal. I can show you how to make Tic-Tacs, or toothpa-"

Another brutal slam into the wall interrupted that joke. No sense of humor, either, then. "Why do you wear it? Are you allied with the Followers of the Spider-God? Yezud is mere weeks away by wagon, is that where you are from?"

He grinned at the old monster. "Heyyy, I know _you_...didn't you play right field for the Yankees?"

Gath smirked and dug into his scalp even more, his long, jagged fingernails tearing at the skin. But as he pulled Peter away from the wall to slam him into it yet again, Peter raised both hands and let the webbing fly.

All of it.

He didn't have much web-fluid _left_ in the shooters, this was true. Still, it was enough to turn the sorcerer's ugly mug into a giant Q-tip end. As Gath gave a muffled shout and let go in order to tear it off, Peter grabbed onto the wall behind him with both hands splayed, felt them stick, and _pulled_ with all his might.

The wall collapsed forward, dust and mortar and several _tons_ of bricks, but not before Peter leaped sideways desperately, bouncing off the ground with the balls of his hands to flip over and land on a nearby wall.

It was a gamble, really. If Gath was _that_ fast and strong, odds were he was that resilient _too_. Sure enough, mere moments later the collapsed wall erupted from below as the sorcerer stood, _furious_, tearing most of the webbing away from his face. His golden eyes were shot through with furious red, now, and an imperious hand reached out. A single word was spoken and...nothing happened. Gath looked confused for a moment, then cursed in yet _another_ language.

"Oh, right, no magic, huh? Wow, that must _really_ suck. Well, your loss, my gain. By the way, you look really snazzy with a web hat." Peter barely dodged the huge chunk of wall that shattered on the wall where he'd been sitting. "What? I was giving you a _compliment_! Don't be so bashful!"

"Be silent! Accursed insect!"

"Arachnid, not insect. A lot of people make that mis- whup!" He only barely dodged the infuriated sorcerer making a wild leap for him. It got him thinking, even as his head seemed wrapped in cellophane and someone kept ringing bells in his skull. That first hit must have taken more out of him than he thought. But the thing that had him _thinking_ was Gath's newfound moves.

Gath was a sorcerer. He cast spells. Sonja had told him the man had only a fraction of his old power, and Gath had been _real_ insistent on that _ritual_ thing he'd been yammering on about before. SO. The ritual was his way of regaining strength, but that was apparently not a problem. Unless he meant _magical_ strength, in which case they'd all be borked. In the past...uh, _future_...whatever, Gath had been dependent on the amulet that allowed him to incarnate himself in people. Only, he didn't have his amulet _on_. So that was yet to come...and meant Gath didn't have that weakness yet. Taking the amulet wouldn't take him out, so to speak.

And yet, killing wasn't an option. Oh, sure, Sonja said the man could take a lot more punishment than a human being. He _was_ a remnant of a bygone era even now, after all. But Peter had never willingly killed before, and sure as hellfire wasn't going to start now. Not to mention what that might do to the timeline. If he did, he might end up returning to a totally weird future where everyone was a monkey.

_Heh. Monkeys._

But he couldn't keep...wait, that was _it_!

Gath hadn't been this strong before. He was now. Since he allegedly had no ready access to magic... Alchemy. Alchemy! A...a potion or serum of some sort. Temporary boost to his system. Wouldn't last him forever, and was probably wreaking right mayhem with the man's internal organs. So if he could just keep Gath going for a while...

...more easily said than done when you took into account the probable skull fracture and concussion and - ow - the aching ribcage that suggested a few _more_ fractures.

Cartwheeling to the side he dodged another blow, and now the old sorcerer had grabbed a sword from one of his knocked-out men. Gath paused only to stab the fallen half-man through the throat, probably killing it instantly.

Something snapped in Peter.

Yes, they were monstrous. Yes, they were brutal killers. But nobody deserved that. _Nobody_.

Somehow he managed to not only dodge the swipe at his gut made by Gath, he also managed to connect with the man's jaw with a foot. Or, as he liked to call it;

"Foot-in-face technique!" Who _said_ he'd learned nothing from Danny or Shang?

The sorcerer staggered back, only to get an elbow to the solar plexus, followed by a roundhouse punch that spun him right round like a record baby... "Elbow-to-gut style! Fist-in-face punch!"

Whooo. That last roundhouse wreaked _havoc_ with his concussion. The whole world began to spin, and the ringing in his ears blended with the tingling of his spider-sense until he had no clue which way was up or down.

He heard from somewhere far, far away a grating of metal against packed dirt, footsteps, and then that vile, gnarled claw-like hand in his hair yet again, grabbing him from a prone position and raising him to his knees.

"Pathetic. I _was_ going to torture you, but now I see it would be useless."

"_Blaaaargh_." A stream of vomit burst out onto the sorcerer's silk robes and sandaled feet, causing Gath to hiss and leap back, still holding Peter by the hair.

"Vile _insect_! For that insult I will raise your spirit from the _dead_ to torment it eternally! Have you any last words?"

The world was dimming, spinning, and it occurred to Peter that the concussion might be _really_ bad. He hadn't been this bad up since that time he tried to fight Doc Ock while poisoned.

But the world stopped spinning, all of a sudden. Just _briefly_. But long enough for him to gather up the very last dregs of consciousness and willpower.

"Y-yeah. I d-do." He balled up his fist. "_I_ have a _date_. And _you_...can go straight to _hell!_"

He wasn't sure exactly how he _managed_ it, but somehow he was pushing off the ground with both legs and sending a downright nasty uppercut into the unprepared sorcerer's jaw. The sound was very much like bashing a snare drum with a big rock, then nigh-instantaneously a dull _clok_ as Gath's teeth met violently.

Staggering to his feet he was actually able to see Gath sailing through the air only to hit an old watchtower by the city walls, bouncing off of it and a rooftop below before finally landing on the ground unceremoniously.

He spit, trying to get the taste of saliva, blood and vomit out of his mouth. Swaying, he made his way towards the downed sorcerer, curling his fists up and trying very hard to ignore the way everything was going double, quadruple or more every time he took another step. His nose felt clogged, so he reached up to wipe only to get a handful of blood on his fingers.

"Oh. This is _bad_." Dizziness, nausea, explosive nosebleed, double vision...yeah, he was in trouble. He needed a few weeks of bed-rest. Possibly more. But Gath was getting up, and nobody here could do this.

A single cough brought him to his knees, and he had to stand up again before continuing, which was easier said than done since for some reason the world had decided to go all liquid on him. Gath was getting up...this was important. Why was it important? Whoa, why was it daylight already? No, it was still dark. Now daylight again. Oh, right. Head injury. Heh.

Something in the back of his head was screaming at him. Someone. Jen? No. Sonja? No, not her either. A guy. Why was a guy screaming in his head?

Wait.

_Get up!_

He knew that voice. Like an older, raspier, smooth-talking version of himself. Fred Tatasciore meets James Earl Jones meets Will Friedle. Wow, he was _such_ a dork for knowing _half_ those names.

"...Ezekiel?"

_Get up, you idiot!_

Like a puppet on strings he stood, his legs quivering. Raising his head he saw a blur rushing towards him, something long and metallic in one hand, roaring with the rage of madness.

A song played in his head. It had been a favorite of Felicia's. Something with this British group called Sneaker something. She _liked_ the band, before they ditched the female lead singer at least, and had played their big breakthrough CD repeatedly when they...well, not that it was anyone else's beeswax _when_ she played it or what they were _doing_ at the time, but...the whole CD had stuck in his head for _months_ after, and then he'd forgotten about it. Strange, the things your memory dredged up in times of stress.

_Spin, spin, sugar..._

As good an idea as any. Peter spun around, the world spinning even more, then fell over as the furious sorcerer continued past, tripped on the half-man he'd stabbed to death and staggered into the burning building behind him.

If not for the horrifying shriek of pain that burst out shortly afterwards, it might even have been funny.

He watched, while prone on the ground and unable to move, as the flames grew higher and a vaguely humanoid shape twirled and flailed madly about in the midst of them, shrieking, howling in agony. Peter tried to get up, wanted to _do_ something, _anything_, but in the end, everything turned black.

…

* * *

…

His mouth was dry and tasted like a sewer. He knew this because he'd been down in sewers _way_ too often, and sometimes, well, sometimes you just couldn't close your mouth fast enough.

Moving turned out to be troublesome. Oh, he could do it, but the first time he felt himself run hot and cold and then turned on his side to throw up noisily on the floor next to the bed.

Bed? Oh, right. He was in a bed. First time in days. He was clean, too. And naked. Someone had taken the time to undress him and clean him up. God, he hoped it wasn't done by women. But going by the society they had here...probably.

_Well, darn it._

A girl with huge, awe-struck eyes rushed in with mop and wooden bucket, cleaned up the mess, then left a small tin tub next to the bed, probably for if he should worship Ulrik the Troll again. He tried talking to her, but all he could muster was a few croaking noises, and she blushed furiously and bobbed a curtsy every single time he even opened his mouth., so finally he stopped trying.

There was a small pitcher of water and an earthenware mug on the table next to him, and he sipped a little before passing right out again.

…

Next time he woke up, there was a small group of people standing in the small room, looking quite agitated. He overheard the quietly upset whispers from those standing at the rear, and recognized the town merchant's guild leader and Sonja at the front.

"_...should be dead!"_

"_...should not be _possible_, and yet he breathes!"_

Sonja smirked at him. It looked like she'd taken the time to get cleaned up, too, because her hair wasn't the greasy mess it had been last he saw her. "Welcome back to the land of the living."

"Oh. Hey. Huh. The _spell_ is still working. Weird."

She shrugged. "The local merchant guild wanted to thank you, with gold, but I'm not sure you'd want it."

"Uh, no, thanks. Not really. You can have it." He looked about the room, and saw a man seated in the corner, writing on a parchment scroll with a long goose-feather quill. "Who's that?"

"Town scribe. He's writing about the reign of Kulan Gath right now, a warning to future generations. He'll put it all on tablets later, for long-term storage."

_Future generations..._

"Huh. Okay. So...what happened? I was a bit out of it at the very last."

She glanced at the merchants. "Well, after Gath caught fire and turned to ashes, we rounded up the last half-men, the ones who didn't escape. They're actually quite docile without their master's influence, so we put them to work in the fields until we feel it's safe to let them go on their way. As for Gath, well..."

"Dead?"

She barked a laugh. "_Ha_! Him, dead? _That'll_ be the day. He's a _sorcerer_, they _always_ find _some_ way to return. Usually worse than before. We found no traces of him in the burnt out building, just some shreds of his robes, so most likely he either escaped somehow or...well, like I said, _sorcerer_. They're worse than cockroaches."

The guild leader held out a familiar sight. "Er, we found this near the inn where the sorcerer's guards first attacked you. We think it might belong to you?"

Peter grinned, even though doing so made his face ache. "My bag! _Awesome_. I thought I'd _lost_ it..."

"Yes. Er. We'll...we'll be on our way, then. Yes. Thank you."

They left in single file, all but Sonja and the scribe. He waited for a while, then turned to the scribe. "Uh, could I borrow that scroll for a moment? Thanks..."

…

The platform lowered itself in the town square where the biosignature claimed Peter was, and Jen leaped off even before it had landed properly. People were running screaming at the sight of her, and a few guards unslung long halberds, aiming them at the quartet in a vaguely threatening way.

None of them spoke a language they could recognize. Time for some basic sign language.

"Hey! Hey! Calm down! We're looking for a man, about yea high", she measured Peter's height in the air with one hand, "spider emblem on his chest", made a crawling gesture with her fingers against the fabric of her suit, "sticks to walls and can jump hella high."

She finished by pantomiming a pair of legs with middle and index finger, miming a great jump from her upper arm ending by landing and 'sticking' to her vertical bicep.

Noh-Varr snickered. "Oh, yes, _that'll_ help. I'm sure they _all_ understood _that_."

"Shut up."

A few of the more overzealous guards tried a lunge towards them, but Jen caught the halberd and snapped it into tiny pieces, ending by crumbling the pig-iron head into a lump. Johnny set himself ablaze, just in case, and Sue shoved the crowd back with a force-field, just in case it came to a fight.

...for some reason this was _amazingly_ impressive to them all, and finally a man with a big, golden chain around his neck made his way up to them. He drew himself up, then gabbled in his foreign language at great length. The non-plussed stare Jen returned to him was probably _not_ what he was expecting.

Finally he looked around and then in an exaggerated way, much like the way some people did when talking to foreigners like they were just hard of _hearing_, said a single, _very_ recognizable word. Mangled though it was. "Pee-tur?"

Jen grinned. "Yes! Peter! Where?"

…

Farak the scribe was exiting the inn, still a bit confused. He carried the scrolls, including the ones that had been, ah, tampered with. '_Nancy_'. What kind of name was _that_?

As he pushed open the half-door to the inn, a hysterically upset tavern maid came running from the direction of the town square. "Gods! They are _gods_! They have come for their own!"

"What? Calm yourself Yelana, what is the _matter_?"

She swallowed, her face red with excitement and exertion. "They came upon a flying carpet from the sky _itself_, and they wish to speak with the lord of spiders! They knew his name, _Peetur_!"

Farak frowned. "...'Peetur'? He told me his name was _Nancy_! Nancy _Raygann_."

"Whatever! Quick, maybe we can get another glimpse of them!"

…

"...will you cut that _out_?"

"Oh, come on, one for the road. It's the _least_ you owe me!"

"I said no the _first_ time, now - hey, _hey_, personal space!"

"Oh, don't be such a killjoy. Just a little, I promise I don't bite. _Much_."

The door swung inwards, and Jen had to duck her head to avoid hitting the door frame. Nothing had really prepared her for the sight within, though.

Peter was trying to hold on to his blankets while a statuesque, curvaceous and athletic redhead with a deep tan all over her scantily clad body was trying to pull them away. His face was red with embarrassment, while hers was rapt with a highly indecent expression. As Jen entered, the redhead turned around, saw her, then looked up, and up and up...

...funny, the ceiling hadn't been that close a _moment_ ago...

The redhead's mouth dropped open. "Bloody _hells_, it's a troll!"

"Who the hell are you calling _troll_, you little-"

"Jen! Help!"

The redhead looked at Jen, then back to Pete, then back to Jen, then smirked. Before either of them could react, she let go of the blankets and, while Peter was distracted, leaned in to-

_Oh no she don't!_

Her scalp pushed _hard_ against the wooden ceiling, and Jen had to hunch slightly to keep from breaking through it. In a single step she was there, lifting the little bitch off the bed by the hair and pulling her over to the door, ignoring the spitting and cursing from the woman who was desperately hanging onto her hair with both hands. Leaning in close, she whispered a single, furious,_ "Get your own."_

Then Jen shoved her outside unceremoniously, closing the door behind her. There were a few angry thumps from outside, then Sue's frosty tones could be heard and Johnny sounding highly amused by it all, after which the thumps stopped.

She didn't care.

He was alive. And safe. And here. Right in front of her. "...Peter."

Her voice didn't just break did it? No, no it didn't. Phew.

"Jen. Hi. You know, I just texted you guys, I had no clue you were _already_ in the area."

She frowned. "Texted?"

"Yeah. Some scribe was writing something about the whole...never mind. How did you _find_...how did you even _get_...man. Hey, gorgeous. _You_ sure are a sight for sore eyes."

Her heart made a little funny flip in her chest, but she played it cool, even though her cheeks were a bit warm. "Yeah, well, _you_ look like _hell_."

He shrugged, then winced. "Yeah. From what I can tell I have a severe concussion, possibly a skull fracture, broken ribs...I may have to sue someone."

"Well, I _am_ a _lawyer_..." She tried to make it all casual-sounding. Why the hell was she feeling all warm in her gut?

"So you are. Hey, wanna know what happened here? Believe me, it's like right out of a movie with The Rock, only without the buttrock soundtrack..."

…

* * *

…

The five gods left the city of Vertanapol at dawn the following day, their flying carpet chariot rising on a pillar of light and wind. Moments later they had risen too high to be seen, and in a flash of bright light they disappeared, as if through a door into the heavens themselves.

Though only the warrior known as Sonja understood their language, and though they tried repeatedly to claim they were not gods, the Zamoran people of the city knew better. Was not the man who had helped free them a spider lord in the flesh? Did he not carry the symbol of the spider god?

It was a bit confusing that he had given more than one name, of course. The name Peetur, odd in itself, or the name Nansi, even stranger. But he was added to the names of those who carried the trickster banner, those who followed the spider-god and were ascended to godhood, and so it was that the many spider cults of Zamora gained another, dedicated to Nansi the Laughing God.

In time, Kushite travelers adopted the faith, carrying it with them back to their heated lands in the south, where they built great temples to their interpretation of Him and eventually made him their own god.

And in time, the mysterious tablet carrying a message of the ages, carved by Farak the scribe after the written original by the spider god himself, found its way into the hands of a young, bitter doctor studying magic in lands where the old ways were still kept.

And in time and again after _that_, the spider-god was finally visited in his temple by the one who had, by chance and accident, long ago brought his name far from Zamora into lands untouched by the cataclysms and war ravaging the lands of what had once been the Hyperborean era.

…

As for Peter Parker, he was out cold, firmly strapped into a seat while Noh-Varr stood, piloting the time platform back to their own era. Sue glanced back once and noticed Jen had fallen asleep, resting her head on his with her hand grasping his. Their fingers intertwined.

She smiled.

"What?"

Sue turned to Johnny. "Hm?"

"Seriously, what's with the smile?"

"Oh, nothing."

…

_Turn the page..._


	8. Epilogue & Teaser

**A/N:** A brief epilogue to whet your appetites for more to come. This is not finished, by far...

Red Sonja is not _quite_ the same woman as the one who later teams up with Spidey in modern times. For one thing, she's a bit older and more responsible, not as prone to letting her libido run her decisions. Angrier, too.

...we've all been young once.

* * *

…

**Epilogue**

…

**Outer Earth. The Center. _Probably_ the 40th century.**

The man once known as Nathaniel Richards, now known only as Kang the Conqueror, stared at the holomimetic screens, feeling the ages bearing down upon him, the weight of his own actions crushing him. Each timeline, altered. Every thing he did to change things, changed things for the worse. It was as if...

...as if he was cursed, somehow.

He glanced at the far corner. A small Redback spider busily worked on a web there, using a crumpled up piece of flimsiplast to make its characteristic funnel. Like a personal insult to him, as if it wasn't enough that he was watching every single alternate future destroyed by Them.

Raising his hand he fired off a concussive blast, shattering cement and steel. He smirked at the results, until suddenly the tiny spider crawled up from the wreckage and began anew.

As he raised his hand yet again to finish the job, someone cleared their throat behind him.

He whirled abut, ready for a fight, but to his horror he could feel the armor's power-sources cycling down, not up, the joints freezing as they lost energy. He could barely move his head, let alone trigger any of his fail-safes.

"_You_! How - how did you gain entry to this sanctum?"

Such a smug smirk on her face. Her red and blue armor, that accursed emblem on the breastplate, that helm with the eight-fold sensor arrays looking so much like arachnid eyes...

Agent Gwendolyn-May Parker, great, great, great-granddaughter of Peter Parker and the honorable judge Jennifer Walters, folded all six of her arms and began reciting the list she had memorized for this day.

"Nathaniel Richards, alias Immortus, alias Kang the Conqueror, alias Rama-Tut, Swaath, Scarlet Centurion, Marcus...the list goes on, and we don't have all day. By the authority invested in me by the Timespinner agency, I place you under arrest for multiple infractions of timelines for the purpose of altering, killing and/or conquering. You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to legal counsel, if you cannot afford such counsel one will b appointed to you by the court of Time. Do you understand these rights?"

He sighed. "Yes. Yes, I do. May you and your accursed bloodline burn in the hells of Purgatory forever."

"Now is _that_ any way to talk to someone? Go on, move along, Watch your head there, don't wanna shear the top of your scalp off on the portal edge. God, I love this job...by the way, great-great-great-gramps sent a message to you. Ahem. '_Gotcha_.'"

…

* * *

…

**Earth 616. New Jersey. Present day.**

"Come on, hurry _up_, the opening credits are starting!"

Debra Whitman rolled her eyes, shutting off the microwave and pulling out the bag of low-fat popcorn, shaking it firmly between two folded towels to avoid burning her fingers. "There any difference from last week's opening credits?"

"Yeah, looks like a Jon Snow-focused episode or something! Get the popcorn here would-"

There was a crash, and Deb frowned. "You okay?"

No response.

"Sandy?"

She'd moved in with her cousin Sandy a few months back when the book deal fell through. They were _somewhat_ alike, though Sandy, being younger, was more of a party animal and sometimes stayed out way too late. Still, if she'd knocked over a lamp again she'd get an earful.

"Hello?" She walked into the living room, but when she saw what was standing there over the curled up body of her cousin, she screamed.

The creature turned a black-on-black head towards her, and spoke. "You have _his_ scent. _You_ carry his _essence_. I will take _it_ from you."

In a swift motion born more out of reflex and desperation than anything else Debra _flung_ the bowl of popcorn at the creature, along with the salt shaker. The bowl was batted aside and shattered the window, but when the salt shaker burst open in mid-air and rained down upon it, the creature shrieked in pain and fury. By the time it had flipped over the couch and smashed through the door, she was already running down the street, not bothering to put on shoes or a jacket or anything.

…

The Shathra flew high above, compound eyes scanning the street below, sensitive olfactory organs tracing the female's pheromones. There. It clicked to itself in triumph and swooped down, stinger at the ready. She had only thought to feed upon it, but now she saw enough of a spark to justify her serving as a host to her children. At least until He could be found.

But as she reached the clumsy human, a bolt of vile spirit energy seared her shoulder harshly enough to set her screaming, followed by another, and another. The Shathra glared at the newcomer below. Another human, his aura thick with sorceries and shielding charms. She hesitated. The meal was getting away! But the sorcerer below was not easy prey. Best not fence with him now, while she was still weakened.

With a contemptuous flip of her wings she turned about in mid-air, flying away with all the speed she could muster. When she had fetched her brother and brought him sacrifice, the two together would find Him and feed mightily. And then she would return to this sorcerer and make him pay.

But not now.

…

"Are you all right, miss?"

Debra looked up into a bizarre sight, a tall black man dressed in a gaudy mishmash of elegant street wear with jewelery, amulets and good luck charms. His face was painted with a white and red skull insignia, and on his chest rested a glowing amulet in the shape of an eye.

"N-n-no. It-it k-killed my _cousin_!"

He shook his head. "My brother did not feel anyone passing, girl. She's alive. Now, put this on. It will shield you from the creature, make her unable to find you. Do you two have anywhere else to go?"

She nodded. "Yes. M-my mother, in Michigan."

Doc Voodoo, the Sorcerer Supreme, smiled at her gently. "Well, then. I will protect you while you gather your belongings, and see you to the train station. Come on. She's scared off for now, but it's only a matter of time before she gathers up the courage to strike again."

"O-okay..."

…

**End of Pt.1**

_(Stay tuned for Pt.2, coming soon, same fic-space, same fic-channel...)_


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